i learn
we learn
Nuggets from student projects and book reviews:
CINE - June 2012
Title Cover Image: Gua Tewet Tree of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GuaTewet_tree_of_life-LHFage.jpg Back Cover Image: Bansky good-wallpapers.com/misc/2679
No copyright violations are intended. However, if there have been some, we crave for forgivance (forgiveness). This compilation is used only for educational purposes and no credit and authorship is sought . Anil Gupta Marianne Esders
Foreword
Dear CINE Participants How do we learn the limits of what we can do? Obviously by finding out what we can not live without. But if our tolerance of inertia is already very high, we will probably be quite happy with the things as they are. In such a case, this course would be a wrong choice for you. But if you do feel that there is a scope of shedding some inertia, taking a few initiatives, experimenting with ideas, using null hypothesis as an approach to life, then “kill your darlings�, that is, try to prove the positions you like most as wrong, invalid, undesirable. Love the devil, and forgive the god.
Sounds difficult? We all have a narcissistic streak in us, we all love our own voice, ideas, images and, of course, positions. Why else would there be so much resistance for any new idea coming form the ground, shop floor, grassroots? This compilation of ideas, excerpts, thoughts, mostly from the projects reports, book reviews and submissions of the students in previous CINE batches, is meant to provoke, persuade and if possible pester you to nudge the edge a bit more.
If you don’t find these colours provocative enough, then you already know the expectation from you this year. If you find ideas worth reflecting, then please try to explore ideas that help you not just to broaden the range of our imagination, but also to convert these into enterprises (social, economic or even political). Most creative ideas don’t always become innovations. They don’t have to. But some of them having potential to become an enterprise may need the help of an empathetic knowledge network. I hope that this time you will create new benchmarks of triggering entrepreneurial ventures. The course may end in August, but you can continue your effort till March. There will be a second offering of CINE in the third term.
I am grateful to Marianne Esders, a visiting doctoral fellow, for helping in putting this selection from CINE archives together. It still needs a lot more work but till then, enjoy! I could not have learned so much from you, if you did not try hard. We can not learn, if I don’t learn, is not it?, help me learn Anil ( breeze, wind………………………) June, 2012
Content imagining
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triggering, incentivising, motivating, inhibiting
B
pooling, sharing, collaborating
C
living & building
D
we learn
E
speaking, writing, reading
F
dancing, playing, painting, moving
G
caring, loving, giving
H
synergising
I
embracing
J
introspecting
K
lalanguedesoiseaux.tumblr.com
i learn –
Why do we feel so possessive about our ideas and feel shy in sharing them with others?
suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com
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imagining
Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award 2012 Winners 1. Vardaan: Stair climbing wheelchair Shanu Sharma, IIT Kanpur Project Guides: Dr. J Ramkumar, Dr. Satyaki Roy Vardaan facilitates climbing up and down the stairs by using an innovative ‘Y’ shaped wheel that provides better grip and optimum braking along with a ratchet and a braking system.
2. Image, Speech Recognition and Speech Synthesis for physically disabled Saurabh Saket and Rahul Ranjan, Bhutta College of Engineering & Technology, Ludhiana Project Guide: Er Inderdeep Singh Grewal Project Hope is an Image, Speech Recognition and Speech Synthesis system. It aims to aid people suffering from hearing and orating /vocal impairments.
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A Multi-Fuel Stove that Makes Water Potable
2011 CINE Project Report by Devadittya Banerjee, Hemant Chhabra, Lovesh Vashist Neeraj, VC Shekhar Suman, Someshwar Roy
Comes with a portable biogas generator, and uses house waste to generate biogas - Runs on multiple fuels - biogas or wood – no issue of dependency on a single fuel - High efficiency design, and extremely low emission - Water filtration - uses waste heat for filtering water to make it potable
A Needle Safety Device
Satnam Singh 2010 CINE Innovator Interview with Dr. Kalpesh Gajiwala Dr. Kalpesh Gajiwala’s invention: A needle safety device - A very simple, economically viable syringe needle cover that safeguards health care workers from routinely accidental hypodermic needle injuries and protects against AIDS and Hepatitis B. The accidents occur while handing over the needle to the nurse in the operation theatre. The problem was to keep the needle at a distance from the body so that even by accident the nurse while receiving the needle doesn’t touch it.
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Equity Financing: Fostering Education and Innovation
Tarun Agarwal 2010 CINE Project Report
“Most people in India finance their college education through a combination of the following sources: Family savings, government subsidy; medium-term bank loans; part-time jobs. All the sources listed above have limitations that prevent universal coverage"
“Financing is thus a critical bottleneck that hampers access to education to all. The core problem that hampers value creation in the manner described in the previous section is that the returns to education take time. An individual invests resources and time for two decades and then the returns are reaped over the lifetime. It has been proclaimed that, on average, the returns to education are some of the highest among alternative investment options available to individuals and societies. However, the long investment horizon creates uncertainty and impatience. Financial institutions, such as private and public section banks, are hesitant to provide loans. When they do, the term duration of the loan is short (a 5 year term is typical) and collateral demands are stringent" “The traditional financial support provided by the government to individuals is in the form of fixed-term loans that are to be repaid back once the tenure of education is complete. This is analogous to the debt corporate houses raise. However, corporate houses also harness another attractive source of capital in the form of equity investments from willing shareholders. My proposal for education financing is inspired by this equity model of financing"
“The government can finance an individual’s education in return for a financing stake in his future income. In financial parlance, the government becomes an equity-holding shareholder in the individual. The government gets a small share of any financial returns generated by the individual in the form of salary or entrepreneurial profits. In practice an x% stake by the government can be implemented by an x% additional marginal rate of taxation paid by the individual on his annual earnings. This can be implemented through the regular Income Tax enforcement mechanisms"
A Private Equity Solution to Human Capital Development Suhruta 2008 CINE Project Report
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Can education be treated as commodity? “Private equity provides capital to enterprises not quoted on a stock market. Private equity can be used to develop new products and technologies, to expand working capital, to make acquisitions, or to strengthen a company’s balance sheet. It can also resolve ownership and management issues. A succession in family-owned companies, or the buyout and buy-in of a business by experienced managers, may be achieved using private equity funding" (Calpers 2012) “We propose a business model based on the operation of “Private Equity” funds. We would spot “under-performing” capital assets (i.e. poor children who are out of school or those who cannot afford a quality education) and take long term financial commitment and actively manage these capital assets (i.e. offer information, counseling and mentoring services) so that they develop into productive assets. We would fund our operations through equity subscription and employ innovative financial contracts to recover our investments" (Suhruta 2008, CINE Report) “Our conception of active management of our assets is through relationship managers (RM). RMs will mentor and counsel a select group of children. Each RM will closely follow the children’s progress individually and assist them in many ways. It is critical that we recruit and retain people with the right fir for RM roles. Continuity is essential for mentoring and developing children who have no access to proper parenting" (Suhruta 2008, CINE Report)
www.mobile-settlements.com/img/img_1.jpg
Innovations in a Middle-Sized German Bakery
Stephanie Nestel 2006 CINE Project Report 1. ”Loo paper roller for product label roll Stupid to handle the product label roll. I had the idea with a wire. Someone took it further and this is the solution now:”
3. “Adhesive label for delivery vans: My father had the idea to place it upside down and it was in our area the topic for almost a month"
“New/Old bread “Lichtenberger”: Made 4.
like the bread was made in former times, with potatoes to keep fresh longer. “ 2. “Fan to dry rolls: Dough was sometimes too wet (in summer) to be processed through the machine and we had a lot of stops and fall outs. This fan dries the roll on the surface and there are no problems anymore. (The machine producer took this idea into their new machines after they saw this) “
5. ”Pretzels with grains: Customer asked us to strew the salt pretzel with grains instead of salt"
GRATIS
Vignesh Sridharan & Karthik V. 2009 CINE Project Report
“The objective of the venture is to distribute notebooks required for the academic year to students in post graduate and under graduate colleges in India. The notebooks shall be distributed free of cost and the requisite funding will be through advertisements. The product shall be 5 subject notebooks of high quality and would be distributed free of cost. While ads would be placed in the books, they shall be located without any hindrance to writing. The educated youth represent a huge target segment for many products. Gratis provides a medium for targeting the segment directly. In addition to ruled pages for writing and advertisements, the notebooks shall also have insightful thoughts and sayings on each page. While this might escalate the cost structure, we believe the value added and the expected response would be magnified by incorporating sayings on each page. We also plan to collaborate with social organizations like CRY, Blind People's Association etc. in order to bring in paintings and publicity for these organizations. This shall be part of our CSR initiative in order to generate popular support for them. BILT, the largest manufacturer of writing and printing paper in India has been contacted to source the notebooks that will be distributed to campus students. Various prospective advertising partners, ranging from retail outlets to restaurants and malls have been approached in Ahmedabad. Several have expressed strong interest in partnering with Gratis. Several local restaurants, for whom IIMA students are key customers, have agreed to insert vouchers and tear-away offers into Gratis notebooks. Of the large brands, Raymond’s and McDonalds have verbally expressed support that could materialize into accounts worth Rs. 25000 each.
We have spoken with the authorities at IIMA regarding the launch of Gratis at IIMA and have obtained their permission to issue free notebooks to the students along with their case issue during the academic term beginning June 2009. Association with IIMA in future launches, dependent on success of the test launch, has also been discussed. Gratis is highly scalable and the volume of notebooks issued can be increased by incorporating more colleges. While the initial plan is to launch at the pan-IIM level, including the undergraduate colleges will lead to a significant increase in volumes handled and a corresponding increase in profitability – due to lower costs for greater volumes"
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FreeNote
2011 CINE Project Report by Devadittya Banerjee, Hemant Chhabra, Lovesh Vashist, Neeraj VC, Shekhar Suman, Someshwar Roy
The mission of the company is to make education a more financially viable option for India’s underprivileged children. Free education is already being provided by a number of organizations across the country. However, to truly enable free education, there has to exist an ecosystem of free stationeries that would support free-education ventures. The Free Note project addresses one such concern – attempting to distribute notebooks for free among underprivileged children. The Free Note implementation consists of two broad strategies: (1) Financing: A viable financial model has been arrived at, where the cost of the notebook can be offset by means such as advertising. (2) Distribution: The Free Note project attempts to collaborate with schools to distribute the notebook to students. Free Note has been envisaged as a non-profit initiative that is beneficial to society.
A Free Notebooks Extremely low priced notebooks mean sure-shot adoption by students Official notebooks at IIM Ahmedabad
Targeted brand building High loyalty user base of students at IIM Ahmedabad
Sponsors
Students
Contribution to a social cause All profits donated to PRAYAAS – an IIMA initiative for under-privileged kids Attractive deals Exclusive offers/discount coupons
Association with IIM Ahmedabad Official notebooks at IIMA
Long exposure of adverts Continued exposure through 3 months of notebook life
Free Notebooks
All profits donated to PRAYAAS An IIM Ahmedabad initiative for under-privileged kids
Social Cause Future plans of a nationwide movement – free notebooks for underprivileged children
www.viziomag.com/index.php?p=wall&sb=wa5&fd=107
Butterfly Plug Damya Bouferrache 2010 CINE Project Report Conventional plug: Convenience There is difficulty of using all the available electrical outlets because of the positioning of the furniture Security Large uncovered area left with classic 2 pin plugs => contact with earth connection Aestheticism Not discrete, nor in accordance with the global decoration of the room
Butterfly plug: Unfolded wings make up a handle in order to insert or to extract the electric plu. Folded wings the wings are lying against the body of the female plug
Security Spare of space Better looking
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Reuters
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“Out of quantity comes quality" (Thomas Edison) “The more I practice, the luckier I get" (Gary Player, golfer) “Do quantities always generate design, or do they make existing patterns manifest?” (Anil Gupta) “When I see the grooves on the parapet of the well, made by the repeated use of rope sliding against the stone wall for lifting water from the well, I ask myself, why will repeated effort not make me succeed, if a soft rope can make grooves on a hard stone wall?” (Kalidasa)
“On one side there are 20.000 installers of renewable energies in France, many of these companies have only one or two employees and no marketing service. They often encounter problems for getting new clients and are willing to pay for leads of new clients.
homeenergypartners.com/pages/training/hers-rater-training/what-is-hers.php
On the other hand there is a need of the general public for an independent and customized advice on renewable energies. People are aware of environmental issues and know that there are financial incentives for house renovation. But they are not yet completely convinced of the reliability of energy systems such as solar panels or geothermic and are lazy, Thus making them unlikely to change their current energy-using habits. Considering the scale of the required investment to change an energy system, they do not want to try risky alternative sources of energy which could be less effective than what they have now. The majority of people being highly risk-averse, they are not interested in these alternative energy systems as long as their reliability has not been established. This is a dilemma, since the mainstream is not interested, green energy does not have the chance to prove its reliability to the majority.
QuelleEnergie proposes a solution to this dilemma in informing and thereby reassuring the householders. Without obliging the householders to take the slightest risk, QuelleEnergie forwards them to a new energy system, to which they are consequently more open and receptive. QuelleEnergie was founded in 2008 with â‚Ź 40000 capital. The â‚Ź 40000 capital came from relatives and friends who were interested in investing in the project and who wanted to take profit of an advantageous French tax policy for start ups. Antoine Chatelain had the idea to launch QuelleEnergie. But he wanted to develop a start up with an other person having skills in computer science. Julien Lestavel, a friend for a long time, was highly motivated in the project. So both decided to become partners and to create the company. They worked on the creation of the comparison engine for 5 months"
Quelle Energie
Heloise Clement 2010 CINE Project Report; Innovator: Antoine Chatelain & Julien Lestavel “Once the comparison engine finished, they launched the homepage in September 2008. QuelleEnergie has a steadily increasing number of people asking for advice for buildings’ savings potentials and thus an increased number of leads that can be sold to the partners and growing revenues. Company growth has been reinforced by a raise of funds (€ 500.000 have been invested by Alven Capital in January 2010).
Website of QuelleEnergie www.quelleenergie.fr (French for “Which Energy”)
All the visitors have to do is to answer a series of questions concerning their energy behavior, their type of house or building and their geographical area. A rating of the inhabitant’s profile, from A (economical consumer) to G (“energy-vore” consumer) is then calculated. It is also proposed to the visitor alternative improvements of the current situation, accompanied by an estimation of the realizable annual savings. A wide range of solutions might be proposed: solar panels, insulation, heat pump among other things. It is also proposed to the visitor to meet an installer"
“The company functions as an intermediary between general public for which it provides a free, independent and customized advice on buildings’ energy-saving potential via a website and more than 100 installers and partners across France. In 2010 the site had more than 30000 visitors per month" “QuelleEnergie could rely on strong governmental support. Furthermore, the economic environment also contributed to the innovation’s success as the government had recently introduced an encouraging tax policy as well as a credit scheme (credit of up to 30.000€ with 0% interest to be paid back over 10 years)" Further info to be found here: http://www.iea.org/Textbase/pm/?mode=re&action=view&country=France
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Understanding Trends in Energy Sector Innovations (using Techpedia as source)
Pritika Padhi & V.M. Avinass Kumar 2010 CINE Project Report
“(…) we did identify the following topics as recurring themes: • Automatic Generation Control – This refers to the regulation of generation output with changes in load, system frequency and other factors so as to improve the economies of generation. • Distributed Generation – Distributed generation is an attempt to spread generation across the nation so as to minimize T&D effort and to match loads with supply. For this to happen, it is important to develop commercial sources other than the traditional thermal and hydro plants, which are site-specific. • T&D planning – Apart from study of designs to reduce T&D losses, we also found projects focusing on algorithmic efficiency for planning transmission lines and distribution centre establishment. • Carbon Tax – The government has recently (in Budget 2010) introduced the carbon tax, which is a recess of Rs.50 per tonne of coal produced or imported. Also, the government has provided for some tax-breaks for import of equipment relating to renewable energy. Thus, there is a slow shift away from traditional fossil fuels. A number of planning projects were involved in the study of changed energy scenarios under these new laws. • Focus on clean technologies – 15 projects explicitly stressed on cleanliness of technology used and were involved in estimating and improving cleanliness. • Focus on rural applications – 9 projects focused on rural applications or extended their research to suitability in remote and rural conditions, thus, showing that there is awareness of the need to make research and innovations more inclusive" “The main trends we found were that the bulk of the projects were confined to the generation aspect (76%). (…) Looking into the technology underlying the Generation projects, we found a clear majority in terms of the number of projects focussing on wind energy. Also high was the number of solar and thermal based projects"
Dye Based Solar Cell
Rahul A. Kumar 2008 CINE Project Report, Inventor: Atul Kumar Singh & Rahul Kashyap “The high cost of silicon in solar panels has led researchers to look for alternate methods of generating electricity without using highly expensive Silicon. (…) This has led people like Atul Kumar Singh and Rahul Kashyap (both doctorate students of IIT Delhi) to innovate solar cells in such a way that reduces its overall cost drastically. It was their desire to come out with a product which doesn’t use silicon and is very simple to manufacture that led them to work day and night and they have finally succeeded in it" “The invention is about a unique solar cell fabrication procedure using natural materials. These dyes include salt water, pomegranate juice etc. It basically works on the principle of photosynthesis"
“The product made by these IITD students need to be publicized by media so that it can get suitable VCs/ investors who can provide these people with funds to carry forward their design and research. It is really sad to see many good inventions die a premature death in India for want of adequate fund or investors. Government needs to form a society consisting of top scientists and academicians who should regularly look into new inventions like these and give guidance to these young bright minds. If India has to become a knowledge superpower we need to give constant support to creative people and strengthen microfinance institutions to provide loans at appropriate rates"
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Automated Gas Stove and Pressure Cooker Sachdeva 2010 CINE Project Report
“Cooking gas is one of the necessary evils of everyday life and very few innovations have been made in this space"
Possible Solutions “Three students from Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad - Saurabh, Ann and Shubham - have developed a vessel detector which turns on the gas automatically when the vessel is put on the burner and turns it off automatically when the vessel is removed from the burner. The innovation involves a sensor which is based on IR radiation and can detect an object based on transmitting and receiving of radiation. If an object is detected, it uses an electric lighter to light the gas automatically. As soon as the object is removed, the sensor detects the same and switches off the gas automatically"
“Davalsab from Karnataka has developed an auto stopper which senses the pressure cooker whistles, generates an alarm and turns off the knob of the gas stove. It also has a digital display system which counts and displays the number of whistles of the pressure cooker. The innovation also includes a timer controller which can turn off the gas stove after preset time. The innovation works on one stored battery and storage cells and is electronic. It consists of an electrically operated stopper with a digital display system for a rice cooker that counts according to the number of whistles. It also consists of two DC motors powered by a 12 volt battery with analogue clock. The preset cooking time for different verities of rice or different dishes can be preset with the clock and this system will automatically switch off the gas once the cooking is over. The adjustment control is easily accessible on the face plate of the machine. A manually operated switch is also available on the face plate of the machine to disable the automatic control and enable a gas machine to be used as a standard manual on/off electrical switch. A unique feature of the innovation is the extremely sensitive and reliable gas flow sensing circuit, which can detect leakages and turn off the knob" Take a look at http://nif.org.in/awards/pdf_file/auto_stopper.pdf
Gas Safety System Innovator: Sheikh Mohammed Ishfaq
While reading about accidents caused due to LPG leakages, Sheikh Mohammed Ishfaq decided to develop a device which can prevent these. After studying the problem and causes of the same, he concluded to find a way of not allowing gas in the pipe when not in use. He discussed the problem and solutions with Prof Anil Gupta and Brig Ganesham. Brig Ganesham gave him financial support for doing the trials. After a number of trials he developed the present gas safety system (2008). Prototype 1
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The system comprises a cable having a semi circular clip and the necessary framework.
• • •
• • Prototype 2
This is a system for allowing gas flow from a cylinder when the burner is on (i. e. gas is being used). When the switch located on the burner is turned off, gas supply from the cylinder is also turned off. Later the innovator added a one way valve just after the regulator which is operated by the clutch wire from the knob on the burner. He developed this system in 2008 and is using it since then. NIF has filed a patent in the name of the innovator (2812/CHE/2009)
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workisnotajob.com
Software Interface for Selecting Paint for Houses Avinash Karn 2010 CINE Project Report
“The software interface will have the following modules: -Uploading of a real time image of a house
- Building a 3 D Model of a house - Identifying and creating layers in a 3 D model - Color applets of various brands - A pick and drop color scheme - Taking account of sunlight and other sources of light “
“Business Model Once we have developed the software, the business model can follow two different routes Option 1: Complete Service Provider In this model, we act as company which provides a complete solution to clients who want to paint their house. They will contact us and we will do the 3 D modeling of their house and help them to choose the best color and also provide them color and painter. For providing all these services we will charge them premium. Option 2: Licensing of Software to Retailer In this model, we develop the software and provide it to a retailer for a year subscription whose license can be renewed by paying some amount. In this model, retailers also benefit because the customer will prefer them over other retailers, which increases their market share. Also they can charge a fixed amount of money to their customer"
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Eblink – Interview with Christian Bittner – Managing Director & Founder Elodie Brochot 2010 CINE Project Report
‘“The world cellular network is like a surface enlightened by many spotlights”
(Christian Bittar’s metaphor). Each spotlight has its own range of radiance. To make sure no area remains in the shadow, parts of their radiance have to be stacked. Cells of the cellular network are just like these spotlights. However, if cells are too close to each other, it can cause interferences. This leads to the first and primordial constraint operators are submitted to, to Cells install their cells or relay stations: the precise location of the antenna to ensure the quality of the network.‘
Radio antenna
Remote Radio Heads
Base Station Radio Link
Wireless RRH
“(…) this new pattern eliminates the problem of the cable tray, which is the origin of most issues the operators are facing. It gives them more flexibility to negotiate the acquisition of new sites, which means that they will be able to focus on their first constraint: the precise location of the antenna. The EB1 device answers to: - The leasing issues, - The environmental issues, - The efficiency issues, - The negotiation and timing issues, - The costs issues"
Coaxials
Base stations
BTS
Exploring Innovation of Industrial Workers Abhijit Roy 2009 CINE Project Report
“When the workers are entangled with problems they try to find out the solutions on their own depending upon their creative skills. If we see closely then we may observe that the shop floor is one of the major sources of innovation for organizations. An organization can achieve long-term sustained competitive advantage if it can tap these innovations and integrate them with the organization’s long term strategy. Exploring, sharing and upgrading these innovative ideas did several miracles in the history of industrialization and it will continue to serve this purpose if we are able to handle such innovations in our times also" There are several structural and social barriers which prevent shop floor workers to come up with their innovative ideas: - lack of sharing (generation gap, rigid hierarchy, language barrier) - lack of corporate culture - dependency on latest technology - dependency on external consultants - lack of investment
www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?contentType=Article&Filename =Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/0680070104.html
Recommendations to promote innovation: - proper utilization of suggestion scheme system -- close interaction between executives and workers -- recognition -- more exposure to latest technologies and systems -- investment in human capital particularly shop floor workers is need of the hour -- meeting presided by a shop floor worker at shop floor itself - presentations by shop floor workers at the workshops to the management executives
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Water ATM
Dicky Roeffen & Kartikeya Shah 2011 CINE Project Report
“In essence, Sarvajal is a water ATM. The business model works on a franchisee system wherein franchisees buy the device and technology from Sarvajal, and establish water dispensing outlets in locations where clean water is scarce. Once established, it is inexpensive to operate (so the cheap cost of operation is typically passed on to the consumer, and it is very affordable) –given the surging demand, profits are expected to be high. As shown on the right, a franchisee owner who caters to 250 households per day, delivers the bottles to his consumers, and pays his operator a respectable sum of Rs 2000 per month, will make an annual profit of almost Rs 3 lakh"
Innovative Water Faucet
M.S. Karthik 2010 CINE Project Report, Innovator: C.V. Venugopalan
“Water being a precious commodity, needs to be conserved in all ways possible, especially water for domestic usage. Saving water wasted inadvertently in everyday use can be a significant help in prolonging the supply of water. C.V. Venugopalan invented an innovative faucet design which saves up to 60% water used daily for washing hands etc. It’s a simple design which can be installed easily, is hygienic and can be the answer to saving from leaky and inefficient taps" Operation “(…) when the knob is pressed, water rushes in and fills the container until air pressure seals it from within. When the knob is released, water flows out through the outlet until it is completely drained and the tap comes back to its original position"
Developed by C.V.Venugopalan
What is unique about this tap is the fact that you can pre-decide how much water you want to use by filling the container (400 ml capacity) initially. Say if you just want to rinse your hand, then you need maybe 1/4th of the container filled or if you want to wash your hand thoroughly, then you may need the whole container or two runs of the same"
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Dominic Wilcox
Ski Equipment Carrier
Elodie Brochot 2010 CINE Project Report
“I made a survey on a population of 50 students, who have their own equipment (…). Among these, 34% would be interested in a product, which would allow carrying the whole equipment, the most comfortable way. We can see that these 34% mostly affect women"
“How to carry ski equipment and luggage?”
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Fuel Dispensing Nozzle with Drip Less Spout for Complete Fuel Delivery B. Saranya, S. Aditya, Jagatjit Turuk 2011 CINE Project Report
“The device is useful to ensure that no drop falls on the ground or remains in the spout pipe of the fuel dispensing nozzle after re-fueling a fuel tank of a vehicle" Fazle-Imdad Shirpurwala came up with the idea “when he was getting his bike filled and some petrol fell on the seat. He had a discussion with his brother about it. However the design was entirely his idea" “Patent filing in India is a painful process and is tricky. About 5000 patents were filed in the West office in 2007 and only 2 examiners are employed to do the filing. Thus there is a huge resource crunch and this causes delays. The patent agent is supposed to act as the mentor to the filer however the agents themselves do not know the entire process and are of little help. The entire process of getting a patent in India itself is about 4 years and the idea itself might have changed over the course. Therefore, he went for a renowned patent lawyer, who charged 10000/hr and it proved fruitful because, he was well prepared when he met the lawyer and the lawyer was professional and knew his job well" How it works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbUaCo1OUU4
The nozzle pushes the trapped and stuck fuel from the spout into the customer’s fuel tank by means of air blow. Approximately 8 to 10ml of fuel can be recovered from the nozzle each time it fuels a tank. On average, every such nozzle shall save at least 0.5 litre of fuel each day.
SIRHANA
2011 CINE Project Report by Angad Bhatia, Manu Bajaj, Moti Baba, Rahul Aggarwal, Rajani Verma, Sagar Megharaj
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“SIRHANA - Society for Innovations at Remand Homes to Arrive at Non-conventional Answers, is the brainchild of 6 students from IIM Ahmedabad who are dedicated to social change and entrepreneurship.(…) SIRHANA aims to capture the latent creativity in the minds of the young inhabitants of Remand Homes (…)" Remand Homes: Possible breeding ground for innovation? After visiting the remand home and after personal interaction with students and administration at this remand home, we identified the following opportunities and weaknesses.
Conditioning & Enabling
Upsides •Lots of leisure time •Some children identified selectively brilliant in solving everyday problems •Art & craft has been identified as a strength •Bare minimum resources forces them to innovate Stakeholders Downsides •Poor technical know-how Innovator (Child) •Poor self confidence due to social rejection •Confusion on long term thinking Requester •Inadequate support for creativity and innovation SIRHANA •Inner energy & frustration to be channelized
%age stake (hypothetical) 50% 25% 10%
Remand Home
10%
NIF
5%
Problem Identification
Idea Validation & Publishing
Rewards & Incentives
Of the various solutions provided by children, we hope that a certain percentage would have commercial value. The above ideas would be patented with the help of organizations like NIF. The requester would have the incentive of sharing royalties of possible patents and being the first choice for commercialization apart from a gamut of ideas. The incentive structure would be based on sharing of royalty from commercialized patents. An account will be created in the child’s name which would hold the rewards till he is 18 years old.
PhokatCopy Avinash Karn, Kumar Rahul and Sumedh Chaudhry 2010 CINE Project Report Shagun Gupta, who was student of IIM Ahmedabad and Alumnus of IIT Delhi, came up with idea of PhokatCopy. “The Idea is to create an alternate channel for advertising so that the advertiser and the customer both benefit. There are three stakeholders in the business viz Advertiser, Students and Photocopier. In general students at engineering colleges take 1000-3000 photocopied pages of books and notes and pay for it. But, in this model one side of the photocopies has an advertisement from an advertiser and the amount which students pay for a 1 side photocopy gets redeemed by Phokatcopy online in terms of some other benefits. The photocopier gets more margin. The advertiser directly reaches the target audience"
Online Pharmacy and Health Management
2011 CINE Project Report by Anuj Jhaveri, Muralidhar Jetti, Rajesh S., Saurav Ghosh, Siddharth Shah, Vivek Iyer
“We plan to create a web, mobile and tele based platform that connects healthcare providers (e.g. hospitals), doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurers with the patient. Through the platform, the patient shall be able to procure all health, wellness and fitness products (including medicines) and have them delivered at the doorstep. The platform shall also provide access to health and wellness services and these services will be made available pan India and 24x7. “ “Key Features Pharmacy: It will provide both OTC as well as prescription products as well as health aids. Electronic Medical Records: Each consumer will receive a unique and universal ID as well as access to a medical calendar which will be used for supplying long term medication. Wellness: Lifestyle, cosmetic and beauty products will also be distributed through the platform. “
“Value Proposition Our advantage is our ability to ensure the genuineness of our products and services. Consumers can be assured that they will not be sold spurious or counterfeit drugs that are rampant in the Indian market today. Our platform will also offer a convenient solution to the health and beauty requirements of consumers. Transactions, especially those involving medium to high ticket size, will become easier due to the availability of online purchase. Our competitive advantage also arises from the fact that we will be able to sell our products at discounted rates because we will not have to incur the rentals that a bricks and mortar pharmacy does. We will be the single point of contact for the consumer and ensure ease of access by growing our presence via multiple mediums. “ “One of our foremost targets is to reduce the number of medical errors in the country. According to a study conducted by the Institute of Medicine the number of deaths caused by medical errors in the US was around 44000-98000 in the year 1999 which was more than the number of deaths due to motor accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined each year. Clearly we understand the importance of reducing medical errors, and we firmly believe that our system in place will help in doing so"
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Le petit ballon has been created by a 26 years old young graduate of EM Lyon business school in Lyon and by the former sommelier of the Ritz hotel in Paris. Through their website, people can subscribe for about 20€ per month to receive two bottles of wine at home by month. Bottles of wine have been selected by the sommelier and are coming with many tips for tasting from this very famous French sommelier. If people like the bottle that they just tasted, they can buy some others online (online wine shopping is very successful in France).
Capital Koala has been created in September 2011 by two graduates of ESCP Europe in Paris and it offers a bank saving account that can be opened for each child. While shopping in Capital Koala partners (big brands of supermarkets, electronic retailers but also groupon, amazon….) a small percentage of the purchase will be put on the account that has an interesting rate of return and will be financing the child’s education.
“See Up is a French start up that has been created in 2011 in Paris by 3 young entrepreneurs and they invented the first at-hand presbyopia glasses. Their starting point was the fact that 100% of the population in the world is affected by presbyopia (sooner or later…). They thought that every public and private place should provide presbyopia glasses for people who don’t have theirs with them, just like someone who needs to use a pen and who does not have one with him" www.seeup.fr
Underpromise and Overdeliver
Lauren Bragard 2011 CINE Book Review of Guy Kawasaki‘s Enchantment
“(…) Guy Kawasaki gives a short definition of Enchantment : “It causes voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions. It is more
than manipulating people to help you get your way. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers" So enchantment is not magic, it is a journey with steps that gives you the key to success"
“Once you have achieved likeability, by showing your passion and aspirations to the whole world, you need people to trust you and for this you need to make the first step: start trusting people before they trust you. Always say « yes » first and then change your mind if necessary but show people that your interests are sincere" “Then, enchant your boss, always end a conversation with a good note and never try to hide them anything. Always “underpromise” but “overdeliver” by prototyping your work"
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Preventing Counterfeiting Vatan Vindal 2010 CINE Project Report
�A lot of people are affected by the counterfeiting of drugs. Life saving drugs, costing thousands of rupees and most importantly someone’s life, may not be of the original quality. There is no sure way of identifying whether a medicine purchased is of original quality or not. With the lack of this resource, lots of unethical people have made this counterfeiting their business. With this innovation, we can device a mechanism by which we can identify the authenticity of the medicine bought. A sixteen digit unique number will be printed on the packaging and by means of the supply chain a track of that lot will be kept in record. Any consumer buying any medicine from anywhere in India, will just send that sixteen digit sms to a predefined number. The return sms will tell the place of purchase, the cost, expiry date and also whether he is the first one to buy or not. With this information he can be rest assured that the medicine he has bought is original or not. As things advance, we can apply this concept to stop counterfeiting of other products like cosmetics, spare parts, clothing, etc"
www.diseaseproof.com/uploads/image/PILLS(2).jpg Google images: Pills
Biodegradable Emergency Beds Alexandre Bedier, 2010 CINE Project Report
“Leaf stands for Local Emergency Aid Furniture. Leaf Supply provides relief organizations with a simple, economical and environmentally friendly bedding solution to help them accommodate massively displaced communities in the aftermath of a natural disaster"
“(…) Leaf Supply will contribute in humanizing living conditions in emergency situations. The maximum weight that a LeafBed can bear is 200kg. It is usable for an estimated time of 3 weeks. It is foldable, but is not meant for that. Basically, it's meant for single use for a period of 3 weeks max. (…) NGOs abandon the equipment after use. It is given to local governments or thrown into dustbins, in which case they must pay for grabs. To reduce their cots they must wash them for reuse (which is an expensive and complex process), whereas in 6 months, when left outside, the LeafBed is disintegrated"
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Medicine Expiry Indication www.nif.org.in
“While cleaning out the medicine box at her house one day, Shweta saw that a lot of medicines had already expired. She got worried that she may have, at some point, taken an expired tablet and it may have caused some damage to her. She thought that being a literate person if she could make this mistake of not checking the expiry date, an illiterate person would face even more problems. This is how she came up with the idea of putting a layer of liquid that degenerates the covering membrane and spoils the tablet after the expiry date"
“Jaskiran got the idea for putting a layer of liquid that disintegrates the covering membrane and soils the tablet once it has expired while she was watching a TV serial. She saw an illiterate person give expired medicines to a patient which worsened his condition. Jaskiran felt that she needed to find a technique to help an illiterate person find out if the medicine has expired or not. So her idea was to make the medicine box/packaging such that it changed colour once expired" They got Ignite award at the hands of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, former President of India.
Medicine Box with Reminder Facility, Taps with Different Timer Settings www.nif.org.in
Waste not, want not’, that is the principle that inspired Mohit to innovate taps with different timer settings. Every day he used to watch his sister use the washing machines and other household gadgets. He saw the water wastage and thought he needed to do something to reduce it. His conscience told him that if there was so much water wastage in his house, then the community would also be wasting as much. Mohit’s second innovation came about because he often used to forget taking medicines when ill. So he thought of putting a timer and an alarm on the medicine box, which would alert him of the time to take his medicines.
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What distinguishes those who have hundreds of ideas but never do any thing to implement them vis-Ă -vis those who test the validity of their ideas by experimenting them, no matter how tiresome?
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triggering inhibiting incentivising motivating lalanguedesoiseaux.tumblr.com
www.thisiscolossal.com/tags/photography/page/26/
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"Gathering raw material in a real way is not as simple as it sounds. It is such a terrible chore that we are constantly trying to dodge it. The time that ought to be spent in material gathering is spent in wool gathering. Instead of working systematically at the job of gathering raw material we sit around hoping for inspiration to strike us. When we do that we are trying to get the mind to take the fourth step in the idea-producing process while we dodge the preceding steps" - James Webb Young
Fostering Creativity
Pierfrancesco Rocca 2009 CINE Book Review of Ashis Nandy‘s Alternative Science – Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists
“I believe creativity does not come in one form only. Rather, in my opinion as many forms of creativity exist as there are thinking beings on our planet. Each of us not only practices but also thinks creativity in a different way. Each of us has a different view of creativity in terms of practical activity, but also in terms of goals, meaningfulness, reasons. In my opinion, creativity does not exist: what exists, instead, is people who apply their intellect in order to do something new, or to do something better. These people may be anyone, at any time and anywhere. They could make their creative efforts just for fun, as a pastime or hobby, as a job, out of sense of duty, just to achieve money or fame, or for thousands of different reasons. Creativity as such does not exist: actions and thoughts of individuals exist. Each of these individuals will have a background and a personality, which will obviously affect what he creates, how, when, where and why. Innovation as such does not exist, either: only new things, objects, processes or actions exist, and they can only be there if conceived by some living creatures (animals or humans: I am not considering the spontaneous mutations of nature). Understanding the real essence of creativity and innovation helps us answer our question: there is no specific trait that the creators or the creating processes must have for the creators themselves to be successful innovators. This may sound trivial, but it is the major learning that, after a long reflection to dig deeper than the obvious logic, I got from the book" “Creativity is a very personal thing, a very personal process, no matter whether it is pursued individually or in a group. Each of us has his or her abilities and weaknesses, passion, interests and preferences, biases and ideas, opinions and wrong preconceptions. Each of us has different goals in life, in the short- medium- and long-run. Each of us has a different character, personality, way of viewing and living life. Each of us, thus, has a specific, personal way of going through the experience of a creative effort. This is something so deep into the human mind and so involving that I believe it cannot be evaluated in any way. The creative effort, thus, cannot be judged, but it should only be praised"
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Bhabi Mahato, Puruliya www.sristi.org/cultural
A mind on the margin is not a marginal mind.
Innovation as Social Action Does the definition of innovation require a language of action? “How does it all start? What makes a person initially act outside the norms of the system, if only so as to enter into an innovating subsystem?“ (Hellström 2004, 639) “I believe that at the heart of innovation lies a social act, i.e. ideating a concept or a mental object, a desired goal, and then physically acting to create and disseminate a product of some kind into a unit of adoption" (Hellström 2004, 632) “Innovation from the point of view of Hegel’s dialectics implies that progress comes about not in a smooth and orderly manner (not incrementally as is assumed in, for instance, Kaizen and linear stagegate models of innovation), but rather through various competing and disrupted forms where conflict and power struggle play a central role. An idea may develop into what it has the potential to become only by being positioned in opposition to existing notions and orders. In this process, the already existing orders may be destroyed (or radically reinterpreted); history evolves by destroying what it was (cf. Hegel’s metaphor of the plant consuming the seed from which it stemmed). Hence Hegel holds that history and historical action (and, in our sense of the term, also innovation) proceed through contradiction. Conflict engenders new and better ideas and pushes towards a more comprehensive understanding (Hegel, [1830] 1993)" (Hellström 2004, 640) “From a critical perspective then, entrepreneurial brain-workers who both own and are owned by themselves have willingly and without conflict entered the iron cage of hegemonic constriction. They are both objects of exploitation and subjects performing the exploitative act, at the same time" (Hellström 2004, 642) “In this view, innovation is a commodity, as is the innovator, and the relation between the two, i.e. the process of innovation, is a thing outside of both. If innovation is viewed as a thing and gets its value from some internal quality or through its relation to other things, then its social history of becoming is not about human transcendence, vision or meaningful action" (Hellström 2004, 644) “This implies taking intention seriously in the study of innovation, including such things as the interplay of identity, affective moods and goal conceptualization, as well as the related duality of norm fulfilment and social deviance involved in innovating" (Hellström 2004, 646-647).
Innovation in Companies Anna-Leona Breidbach 2010 CINE Project Report
To fully harvest a company’s internal inventive potential, an approach is needed that “promotes invention within the whole company” (…) and “offers solutions of how to deal with ideas that are not in line with the current product portfolio, market segments or applications of choice" Such an initiative aims to “foster an innovation culture that motivates each employee to think about new products and businesses. Furthermore it helps to cooperate with all subgroups to follow up promising ideas and finally it aims at bringing people together, giving inspiration and supporting the submitters of ideas"
“(…) the main challenge was how to make ideas of "personal relevance" and assign them to persons in charge. Because he himself experienced how ideas can be "lost" within the organization when no one is in charge of taking care, he proposed the implementation of centralized Innovation Managers who function as a contact person and a suitable incentive system. (…) he explains that many ideas, that didn’t fit the existing business set-up were ignored instead of taken as a sign that there might be a greater potential in other areas. Having this issue in mind he fought for the set-up of an independent subgroup, the Innovation Corporation that exclusively evaluates the business potential of new ideas that come in (…) As it is an independent company, the Corporation might be more enabled to think "out of the box" of existing structures (…)
According to him the lack of inventions was not about the fact that there were no creative people within the company. It was more about the missing connection amongst them and the lacking incentive to be innovative. Additional to that, he emphasized diversity in terms of different people with specific backgrounds to be elected as Innovation Managers. He believed that the so far widespread belief, that innovators have to come only form the Research & Development department is wrong and that mixed groups of people are more likely to come up with revolutionary ideas. (…) The intranet platform created a forum, where people of all backgrounds and functions could post their ideas, share assessments or challenges with each other as well as discuss different aspects"
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“We understand … that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language" — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1967
Inventive Ideation “Creative individuals are thought to embody a tension of knowledge breadth and depth, viz lateral and vertical thinking and have been described as ‘the embodiment of contradictions’. As such, they should not only be given opportunities to deepen their knowledge and acquire requisite expertise in the field, but also to be stimulated by exposure to a diversity of information, thoughts, people and situations"(Ross 2006, 11)
“People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction and challenge presented by the work itself, more so than for instance via extrinsic rewards such as money. Key elements of this intrinsic motivation are recognition, and encouragement via organisational, supervisory or work group supports, as well as autonomy, freedom, allowing self-initiated activity, personal initiative, and provisioning of effective incentives. The importance of providing creative people with challenging work that provides ‘stretch’, whilst minimising workload pressures and tolerating failure, is emphasised by several sources. This is critical to the incubation of ideas that eventually leads to new insights and discoveries" (Ross 2006, 11-12)
The four sources of inventive ideation (Ross 2006, 13)
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A Manifesto of a New Innovation Model Driven by the Arts
2011 CINE Book Review of David Edward‘s The Lab, ( the student reviewer will like to remain anonymous: Ed) “This book promotes innovations and new ideas which involve both art and science. It explains how a new kind of lab, based on the principles of typical science labs, but more focused on art and design, can become an incubator for innovative products that would certainly not have been realized without such a structure. The artscience lab was the incubator for breathable food called the Whif – a small object which enables you to breathe chocolate and get the taste in your mouth, for zero calories – and for Andrea – a plant-based filter that can remove toxic gases from the air of a room – and many others…” ‘As David Edwards puts it: “A manifesto of a new innovation model driven by the arts, this is the first detailed description of an emerging cultural phenomenon in the United States and Europe where artists and scientists collaborate to produce intriguing cultural content and surprising innovations"’
“Edwards is convinced that people learn more quickly when they have personal interests at stake. On the other hand, he promotes the concept of idea translation, where “students learn to learn in real-world settings”. Those two concepts are I think quite opposite. Students within the Cloud Foundation have nothing really personal at stake, and that is certainly the reason for which they participate. They can only be winners, and students developing projects that do not become concrete do not lose anything… And I think it is a good motivation for regular students to simply be experimenting in order to learn. They do not need to have anything at stake, incentives –like prizes, recognition… - are enough for them. This is allowing students to develop crazy ideas which might be at first sight believed to be impossible to realize"
“The positive aspect of passion is that the person it drives will never give up and attempt the craziest thing so that the idea becomes successful. The drawbacks of passion can be lack of realism, narrow vision and stubbornness" www.davidideas.com/
“Edwards says: “Logic tells us that the pursuit of ideas that exclusively serve narrowly defined interests is a bad bet […]. Experimental altruistic ideas defy the kinds of perceived conflicts of interest that sometimes stop idea translation in non-lab environments with more narrowly defined interests”. I have to say that I completely disagree with this statement. People with narrow sets of interests can get their ideas through very far, if they have a good communication strategy, good lobbyists, strong power or good allies and certainly a lot of money"
The Weight of Complexity
M.D. Nafis Ahsan 2011 CINE Book Review of Tim Harford‘s Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure
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“Concerning the environment, Harford offers great insights revealing how very "ungreen" are the actions of those who presume to be environmentally aware. Grocery shoppers have been skipping the plastic bags in favour of reusable ones brought from home, but Harford notes that those plastic bags provided by grocery stores account for 1/100th of the carbon emissions of the food environmentalists put in them. Those who are embracing the theory of global warming are seemingly always turning off lights and other appliances, but the cappuccinos they drink (think milk) while congratulating themselves for their forward-thinking ways are responsible for far more carbon emissions than result from plugging in a mobile phone, or turning on a kettle"
“To summarize, in Adapt, Tim Harford argues that the process of innovation has been pulled down by the sheer weight of complexity of the modern world. Good ideas are being ignored and rejected by bureaucracy while bad practices and dangerous errors flourish in most dysfunctional markets. To find solutions to some of the big problems – climate change, financial instability, global poverty – we must go back to basics, examining the circumstances in which ingenuity has broken through in the past, and then we must find ways to replicate them and sustain them" www.modepilot.de/2009/02/14/leinentaschen-mit-botschaft/
www.thersa.org/
The surprising truth about what motivates us. RSA Talk by Daniel H Pink
Determinants of Innovative Behaviour of a Firm “What triggers change and innovation in firms?” (Montalvo 2006) “It is clear that a wide variety of factors depending on the type of innovation in question and the internal and external contexts of the firm can trigger innovation"(Montalvo 2006) “We can have a firm that is highly motivated to innovate by normative aspects of behaviour (i.e. either by market, community or regulatory pressures). In addition the firm could be facing good economic opportunities in combination with laudable social outcomes. Taking into account only these aspects concerning attitudes and social norms might lead to wrong conclusions if we do not take into account past experience and the current control over the innovation process (i.e. economic resources, timing and capabilities). Similarly, a firm could be highly motivated to innovate by attitudinal aspects of behaviour (i.e. economic opportunities and good appropriability conditions) coupled with high capabilities to innovate. Being both aspects optimal, still normative aspects (e.g. community and regulatory pressures) could stop the innovative process. The case of genetically modified crops provides an example of this case" (Montalvo 2006) “…rather than focusing on individual determinants the proposed model takes a holistic approach. It includes cognitive, motivational and instrumental aspects that may affect the behaviour of the firm" (Montalvo 2006) “(…) concerning the explanation of dissonance between cognition, motivations, plans and behaviour, contrary to mainstream models, the proposed model does not assumes that behaviour should be consistent with the optimisation principle. (…) the model is a definitional system that prompts for the inclusion of variables such as beliefs, expectancies, values, plans, past experience and control as moderators between cognition, motivation and behaviour. It takes into account that the relationship between cognition, motivation and action is not straightforward. This provides the opportunity to look at managers (firms, groups and organisations) as dynamic social actors searching for change but perhaps encountering many obstacles that hamper the achievement of an ideal goal" (Montalvo 2006)
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travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/sumo-photos/
Freakonomics
Moti Baba 2011 CINE Book Review of Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics
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“What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? Where have all the criminals gone? What makes a perfect parent? Would a Roshanda by any other name smell as sweet?”
Freakonomics is based on certain principles: 1) Modern life has a strong dependence on incentives. Understanding incentives or what makes certain things work the way they do is the key. 2) “Conventional wisdom” may not always be right. It is often the most quoted answer but that does not necessarily mean it is correct. 3) Distant, subtle causes can lead to spectacular effects in the future. Roe v. Wade (i.e. legalization of abortion in U.S.) has had more effect on lowering crime than better policing and gun control, although no one had connected the dots between the two. 4) Experts use their informational advantage to server their own agenda. However, with the wider reach of the Internet, this advantage is reducing, especially for items like insurance policies and coffins. 5) An understanding of what to measure and how to measure it makes it much easier to understand the otherwise complicated world. An economist has to be able to look at the data the right way to recognize the signs, make connections and solve problems.
Three Cups of Tea Anna-Leona Breidenbach 2010 CINE Book Review of Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin’s Three Cups Of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations … One School at a Time
“Of course the inhabitants of Korphe didn’t have all the resources it takes to build up a school from scratch in the first place. But the question is: Did that hinder them to think about building one or did they just never question the system that was in place since forever: that there was no chance for children to get a non-extreme kind of education. Mortenson mobilized people and motivated them to contribute to his idea so that in the end the heads of other villages asked him for advice because they wanted to participate in his idea. (…) he sustainably contributes to an increase of international understanding. I don’t want to compare this to other entrepreneurs, but in my mind this is the main contribution, people in nowadays society can do"
Creativity in Product Innovation Vatan Vindal 2010 CINE Book Review of Jacob Goldenberg & David Mazursky’s Creativity in Product Innovation
“(…) Are consumers a rich source of creative alternatives when a company is looking for alternatives to a new product or service. And the answer is NO. Ideas can be generated in two ways: based on creative thinking or based on market information (or the consumers). Consumers may provide information concerning the improvement of existing products but they cannot help in creating truly original products, since consumers may be a reliable source of information for present needs, but they are not able to predict future needs. In the book you will find the Creativity Templates approach, in which they trace the common characteristics behind known creative ideas or products and based on them create new products or ideas. According to this approach: "Over time, market needs and desires are 'mapped' or 'encoded' into a product, the configuration of which becomes a physical representation of past selection of the market or an 'echo' of past customers' preferences. Therefore, the Templates approach places the product itself as a tool to predict the market trends and the characteristics a new product should have to answer future needs of customers. While the approach applies familiar characteristics to new products, it also has a surprise element, since the characteristics are new concerning the specific product; this produces an effect of "unrecognized familiarity". The main section of the book describes and demonstrates 4 Templates, with a Forecasting Matrix added to assist use of one of the Templates. If one decodes these Templates, one finds that they are simple Su-field action/function statements. 1. The Attribute Dependency Template: It is a suggestion to use a component of the system to perform a new function, or a new variation of that function. 2. The Replacement Template: It suggests you use a component to replace the function of another component and thus remove that component 3. The Displacement Template: It suggests removing a component and all its functions, which is standard TRIZ where the functions are no longer required, but we do like their additional suggestion that you then find a market for this new product, which lacks these functions, and they give good examples. 4. The Component Control Template: It suggests using a component to reduce a harmful effect from an outside component”
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Innovation and Warfare
Abid E.H. & Arun Balakrishnan 2009 CINE Project Report
“There are differences in the way the army works and civilian organizations work. In an army the line of command is clear. There are no politics, organizational cultural differences and personal agenda. The fact that the personal imperative is taken away from the agenda during wartime helps to bring the best out of people. Everyone involved in war has a very high level of identification towards the cause. There is pride, patriotism and other emotional values attached in war effort, as opposed to the monetary gains in an organization. The nation’s vision and mission, that is to win the war and keep the country free is something which is everyone’s aim, and everyone identifies with this cause. In a commercial organization, the vision and mission of the company might not be something which every employee identifies with. People might have personal agendas, commercial and numerical targets to achieve etc. Survival is yet another issue. In the face of an invading enemy, there is no option but to fight back. In an organization, the fall of an organization does not necessarily mean the fall of every individual. There are exit options, and other companies to go to. But in war, a person has just one army to stick to till the end of his life and one country to fight for – that is his own" www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d51009/d5100960l.jpg
Innovation in Jail
Anne Delvincourt & Louis-Marie Schmitlin 2009 CINE Project Report
“The inventor of the toothbrush was William Addis, an inmate. He invented this item in the year 1770. He made it from a bone saved from a meal. Holes were drilled and tufts of bristles glued to finalize the realization of the first toothbrush. This invention was completely unexpected to come this way: Jail is not the cleanest environment we could imagine! But when you live 7/7 24/24 in the same cell, you pay more attention to your personal hygiene"
“As integrated coffee machines are forbidden in jail, Angelo had to develop a proper filter. This filter is based on the metal tabs of a notebook, topped in both sides by two toothbrush heads melted together in the middle – which are the core part of the filter, and wrapped by a rubber band"
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Invented by Angelo
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Michael McGoodwin 2011 CINE Book Review of Jared Diamond‘s Guns, Germs, and Steel
“The first printed (stamped, not handwritten) document is the Cretan Minoan Phaistos disk of 1700 BC, but it did not lead to a proliferation of printing apparently because it was ahead of its time, lacked receptive circumstances and supporting technology, etc . Though necessity is sometimes the mother to invention (e.g., cotton gin, nuclear weapons, steam engine), invention often precedes the creation of necessity (e.g., airplane, light bulb) and arises cumulatively from creative geniuses building by trial and error on the discoveries of their capable predecessors. Early models of inventions often perform poorly and appear unconvincing. The flourishing of inventions requires acceptance within a society, which is influenced by the invention's: (1) economic advantage, (2) social value and prestige, (3) compatibility with vested interests, and (4) ease with which its advantages can be observed. Receptivity to technological innovation varies from society to society and is increased by (1) longer human life expectancy, (2) lack of availability of cheap or slave labor or a high cost of labor, (3) patents or other legal protections, (4) ready availability of technical training, (5) rewards for investment via capitalism, etc., (6) individualism, (7) encouragement of risk-taking, (8) scientific outlook, (9) tolerance of diverse views, (10) religious tolerance and religious encouragement of innovation, (11) ±war, (12) ±strong central government, (13) ±rigorous climate, and (14) ±abundant resources. Receptivity to innovation varies widely on each continent. Most new developments arrive by diffusion, which for places with geographic or ecologic barriers is limited. Food production and large population and land mass favor more rapid technological development -- e.g., in Eurasia. In New Guinea and other areas of the world, conservative (resistant) and more receptive societies lived side by side. The Navajo more than other Indian tribes adapted European use of dyes for weaving and took up ranching. The receptivity to innovation in Islam and China has varied over time. Thus no continent has been unusually innovative or noninnovative over history. Important inventions such as guns can allow a culture to overrun another. Yet in Japan, the samurai restricted the adoption of guns until Commodore Perry arrived 1853. Other examples of cultures rejecting new innovations include the Tasmanians (fishing), China (ocean going ships), and Polynesians (pottery in some areas). Technology is autocatalytic, begetting more technology, and the rate of development can accelerate dramatically. The main factors leading to the difference in technological development between the conquering Europeans and the New World inhabitants were: level of food production, barriers to diffusion, and differences in human population"
Survival of the Sickest
Rohan Anand 2011 CINE Book Review of Sharon Moalem‘s Survival of the Sickest
Imagine if a virus causing a fatal disease needs a particular chemical which is found in abundance in the nasal fluid of healthy people, what will happen, the sick people will survive. That is what happened once in Europe. “Haemochromatosis is a medical condition which is related to high iron levels in the human body. These iron levels can build up over a period of time and can be fatal in extreme cases. The irony is that iron in small amounts is necessary for the proper functioning of the body. This particular disease is more common in European people. The author has tried to probe deeper into this problem. In fact iron is required by the microorganisms attacking our body to survive and flourish.
bentspoke.tumblr.com
The author goes back in time to 13th century when Europe was devastated by the epidemic bubonic plague also infamously remembered as “black death”. Then he goes on to state that the healthier people were more susceptible and vulnerable to bubonic plague as their bodies contained the adequate amount of iron which unfortunately provided the perfect platform for the microorganisms to grow and multiply. This argument explains why the people with less amount of iron in their bodies were less vulnerable to this disease.
However there is another mechanism in the bodies of people with less iron which plays the trick. In people who have less oxygen in their body, there are some internal mechanisms which are active to trap whatever small amount of iron they can find. So continuing from the 13th century bubonic plague, it can be argued that most of the people who survived were deficient in iron and thus possessed the iron-locking internal mechanism. So today when most of the people are having balanced diets, it is highly unlikely that there would be iron deficiency. But since the European people have descended from the survivors of the 13th century bubonic plague, the iron locking mechanism in their bodies is still carried to the next generation through genes. Due to this mechanism, the amount of iron keeps on increasing to dangerous levels and can be fatal at extreme levels. So in a very cryptic argument, one can say that this process which would have led to a certain death 25-30 years down the line was carried forward by just one logical explanation- that it prevented the death now"
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Fooled by Randomness
Ashok Nehra 2011 Book Review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s Fooled by Randomness
"This is a book about luck. More specifically, it is a book about how we perceive luck, twist it around and regard it as intention or purpose. What better setting than the world of trading to investigate the subject? How often has the brilliant trader, who seems to the outside world to have been granted the gift of second sight in the implementation of his strategies, been suddenly wiped out by an unexpected shift in the markets? The book may have its roots firmly in the financial arena, but it also incorporates and explains the effects and repercussions of randomness in many varied fields - ranging from philosophy to literature and science - to create an insight into how randomness cannot be conquered, but can be embraced" "Humans try to bring pattern into everything to arrive at some result or predict the future but it’s not correct because result is completely random which cannot be captured in patterns. " "A chance of fittest survival doesn’t state that there can’t be any incident which can alter it"
www.jvlendnote.com/post/17754105333
Life-Cycle Thinking and Design “The concept of Life Cycle Thinking integrates existing consumption and production strategies, preventing a piece-meal approach. Life cycle approaches avoid problem shifting from one life cycle stage to another, from one geographic area to another and from one environmental medium or protection target to another. Human needs should be met by providing functions of products and services, such as food, shelter, and mobility, through optimised consumption and production systems that are contained within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem of this planet" (European Commission 2010) “Considering environmental issues during product development widens the scope of the product developer and reveals new aspects which support innovation in two ways. Firstly, the product developer gets to know the product better, since he/she gains more insight from a different view point. This leads to a better known strengths-and-weaknesses profile of the product, which makes it easier to find solutions to the problem while keeping the whole product and its system in mind. Secondly, foreseeing the whole life cycle and considering other aspects often inspires new innovative solutions on various levels. Examples of this are the fuel cell and hybrid technology in the automotive industry" (Ernzer & Bey 2003, 563) Related topics include: IPPD – Integrated Product Process Development Rebound effects Cradle to Grave Cradle-to-Cradle Functional innovation Product-Service-Systems Systems Thinking
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Where Do Good Ideas Come From?
“It involves creating an environment where a hunch can gestate. Often, you have half of an idea and it doesn't make any sense, but it's interesting. If that idea can sit around for a few years, it changes, or you meet someone who can help complete it, the technology around it changes or your own technological maturity advances. Suddenly, that idea makes a lot of sense. Hunches also need to collide with other people's hunches. It's through the collision between those different ideas, those different world views and those different perspectives that people become more original thinkers. (‌)
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It's much easier to stumble across something on the web than it is in a library. The percentage of the population that goes to the library and walks along the stacks and takes a book down because they like the binding is incredibly small, whereas the number of people who've gone to Wikipedia and ended up reading about monarch butterflies when they had no idea that they were interested in monarch butterflies is a very large part of the population. And probably growing. (‌) We often have successes that are disproportionate to what makes them good, particularly things based on network effects. Once you hit the tipping point, you will end up a thousand times bigger than the competition. But your original idea may only be five times better. It's hard for humans to look at the thousand-times bigger innovation and not to assume that the person who came up with it was a thousand times smarter" (Steven Johnson 2010)
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Ben Shahn - www.illuminationstudio.org/images/Ben_Shahn_Wheatfield.jpg
“To never stop breaking the rules is the essence of evolution. (‌) Like in generating new models, no restraint must stop one from designing experiments that test the boundaries of the model. One important fact forgotten by people who fear failure is that every failed experiment which was well-designed is also a source of vital information" (Sardana, D. & Vasudevan, S., 2011 CINE Project Report)
Innovation and Ego Walls
“First, he analyzes how large companies & experienced management display a very riskaverse attitude while adopting innovations. The reason, according to him, is the resistance to change from a philosophy that has worked for a person or a company as a whole, and the potential risks brought by adopting a new strategy. Other negative reactions to innovation are based out of envy, pride, priority, sloth, greed & consistency. The learning here is that the notion that the manager or the large corporation knows best is flawed …” (Rohan Choudhary 2010 CINE Book Review of Sott’s The Myth of Innovation)
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B “People have a nasty habit of clustering in coalitions, professing certain beliefs as badges of their commitment to the coalition and treating rival coalitions as intellectually unfit and morally depraved. Debates between members of the coalitions can make things even worse, because when the other side fails to capitulate to one's devastating arguments, it only proves they are immune to reason”
(Steven Pinker, CINE 2010 book review by Jagatjit Turuk on Brockman’s What s your dangerous idea: Today’s leading thinkers on the unthinkable)
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Feedback and Criticism
“(…) most of the time people don’t give honest feedback in business life because it is easier not to do so. However according to Jack Welch the most important advantage of candor is that it enriches conversations and thus enables people to generate rich ideas, bring about progress faster and operate more efficient. (…) the necessity to provide people the possibility to speak their minds and the necessity to deal with people in a respectful way. He describes that in an environment where open speech is not promoted by higher level managers employees would tend to withhold their own opinion a pattern leading to corporate inertia" (Christian Schlapka 2011 Book Review of Jack Welch’s Winning)
“Criticism is not the worst thing that can happen to anyone. The worst that can happen to anyone is if no one notices one’s initiative" (A Yashwanth 2010 CINE Book Review of Seth Godin’s Tribes)
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Discrepancies Vivek Sharma 2009 CINE Project Report
“Many times, however, it is the competence in a particular field that leads an innovator to explore the problem at hand and arrive at a solution which can be much harder. This is because innovations require people to get involved in the “doing” process and many people who have relevant knowledge are reluctant to do so. One of the reasons discussed in many papers and reports on creativity is that people who have knowledge feel that the problem solving process is easy and anyone can solve the problem. Therefore, they do not get involved in the “doing” process. Another reason discussed by many writers on this topic is that people may find the problem too difficult or uninspiring due to which they do not get involved in the creative process"
“Another problem faced by innovators is the asymmetric information problem. Innovators possess plenty of technical knowledge while the scientists who test the product understand the theoretical models behind the product. Many times this asymmetric information results in ego clashes or heated discussions between innovators and scientists"
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“Final commercialisation of your product is the toughest job. We can always make a prototype and show the concept to everyone, but to make it marketable we need to have a Chinese finish, which most of the products lack in India. Taking a product from 0 to 99 percent is still do-able, but that 1 percent of commercialisation is the toughest job" (Akshat Khare in 2010 CINE Interview by Vatan Vindal)
Marsha Cottrell Untitled 2011 iron oxide on mulberry paper marshacottrell.com/pages/current/current11L.html
“As is evident from Galileo’s story also, financial help for innovators is a huge blockade in nurturing the innovative human mind. A lot of innovators stop pursuing their passions and ideas for lack of financial funding. Galileo’s situation is more than relevant in today’s world. Despite all the lack of funds, he continued to run after his passion for science and that is how the best innovators in today’s world have turned out to be successful. The world today is full of popular stories like investors who completely refused initial funding for Google - which now practically rules our lives and the world in some sense" (Hemant Chhabra 2011 Book Review of Bertolt Brecht’s The Life of Galileo) www.star-astronomy.com/wp-content/uploads/ galileo-telescope.jpg
Nicolas Hayek – Beyond SWATCH Saga
Alexandre Bedier 2010 Book Review of Hayek & Bartu’s Nicolas G. Hayek, Au-delà de la Saga Swatch
“How are you?” “Why ask this question without expecting an answer"
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“Every structure in operational units is necessary but should not become a purpose in itself" “The businessman is also an “artist”. He has to imagine, create and accomplish new ideas" (Statements by Nicolas Hayek in 2010 CINE Book Review by Alexandre Bedier) www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituaries/7861751/Nicolas-Hayek.html
“I am convinced our watches are not measuring instruments to know what time it is. You can do that, but watches are more—they are art. We put in all our watches, Switzerland" (Statements by Nicolas Hayek in WSJ Article by Michael Clerizo, June 2010)
swatch4u.blogspot.in/2010/10/swatch-new-gent-collection-2010-fall.html
The Innovator’s Dilemma
Rahul A. Kumar 2008 CINE Book Review of Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
“Now, let’s try to answer how come some large companies have vanished into oblivion. Generally, large companies have large goals and they look for opportunities whose payout is large. If the payout is not very profitable they generally chuck the plan. And here small and growing companies come into the picture. They invest in new products and technologies compared to established ones. The new firms also understand the value network, customer needs and thus they try to position themselves to the usage of this new technology and make it hard for established players to enter. It’s not that large companies couldn’t tackle disruptive technologies. Yes, they can but it comes at the price of diverting away resources from existing revenue technologies to the disruptive ones. This shifts attention from the core work and sometime is detrimental to overall health. Also, organizations sometimes acquire smaller companies who have succeeded in disruptive technologies, but it often results in failures because of egos attached to parent companies. The mantra for large companies is that they should continue to improve upon conventional technologies and at the same time be followers in adopting new ones"
“Now, let’s ponder what this book means to budding entrepreneurs like me. To me, it gives the motivation that, if I have the will power to take on the well established players only sky is the limit for me. I just need an innovative bent of mind which can come up with new inventions and technologies catering to the anticipated needs of people. To make it successful I must be able to recognize the value of disruptive technologies through conservative initial marketing practices, targeting relevant markets and consumers, and frequent changes to the initial layout and design of the product"
The Ten Faces of Innovation
Nupur Gupta 2011 CINE Book Review of Tom Kelley‘s The Ten Faces of Innovation
The Learning Personas The Anthropologist: The wisdom to observe with an open mind is the most critical characteristic of an anthropologist in an organization. The fact that they don’t judge, but only observe ensures that they look beyond the obvious and seek inspiration in unusual places. The Experimenter: These are the people who have a curious mind and are very passionate about hard work. They love to try different ideas and approach problems with different angles. The Cross Pollinator: The author gave a beautiful definition of the cross pollinators. They are the ones who can create something new and better through the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts. The Organising Personas
The Hurdler: Hurdlers are the risk-taking, often street-smart individuals who are always ready to take challenges head-on and smoothly overcome any obstacles in their path. The most admirable characteristic in them is their positive and deterministic attitude towards life. They love to excel through all sorts of challenges, tight deadlines, finding way out of disastrous situations etc. The Collaborator: As the name suggests, collaborators are the ones who like to bring diverse people together and get the work done. They like to work in multi-disciplinary fields and value the team over the individuals. The Director: Directors are the leaders who gladly step up and take charge when the need arises. They put together the best team they can find and are even willing to restructure projects if the need arises. They take tough challenges and in spite of that, are content to let others take the spotlight. The Building Personas The Experience Architect: A good experience architect sets the stage for positive encounters within the organization and for the customers. The Set Designer: Every organization (and every employee) performs a bit better or worse because of the planning, design and management of its physical workspace. The set designer can create that intangible element that helps turn around an organization. The Caregiver: The personal touch of care in the organizations or to the customers can work wonders. Anticipating customer needs and go beyond mere service to satisfy that need can spur the profits of any company. The Storyteller: In the end, the author gives strong reasons why a storyteller is important to an organization. The most important among them is that a storyteller builds credibility.
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Failed Innovations
Anumeha Singh 2009 CINE Project Report “Exploring out the reasons as to why innovations fail would be an interesting question to unfold" “It is believed that fifty to ninety percent of innovation projects make little or no contribution to the organizational goals. According to a product innovation survey, out of three thousand ideas for new products; only one becomes a success in the marketplace. As a matter of fact, failure is an inevitable part of the innovation process; and most successful organizations factor in an appropriate level of risk. The impact of failure can’t be limited to the simple loss of investment. It can also lead to the loss of morale among staff, an increase in cynicism and even higher resistance to change in the future" www.admittingfailure.com
“The main realm of projects basically deals with those innovations or creative ideas which because of some reasons couldn’t deliver its promising effect and eventually failed disastrously. The fact that almost around 90% of innovations fail to materialize was the main motivation to drive me to research upon this particular topic. It’s quite a known fact that the failure reasons for each innovation is case specific which cannot be generalized. In due course of the project research, I came up with the examples of few such innovations; attached with which were lots of expectations and capital investments. In other words, there were huge market hypes prior to the product launch which ultimately resulted in a terrible failure. These were the innovations which ceased right at their third stage of the Hype Cycle" Gartner Research's Hype Cycle Diagram
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Blink
Khitij Gupta 2009 CINE Book Review of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink
“Gladwell builds upon the immediate judgments through the presentation of the “thin slice” theory, wherein he relates that the thin slice is the ability of the human mind to accurately zero in on a certain situation and reach a decision in a matter of seconds" “Innovations often suffer for want of these kinds of snap judgments. People sit and brood too much, researching whether similar innovations were successful in the past. The element of scepticism becomes so inherent in our decision making process that for us to even consider the blink effect as credible becomes blasphemous. The entrepreneurial spirit relies on the ability to be able to follow your instincts and be able to act on the spot with whatever limited information is available. Only through the actualisation of the blink effect will we be able to kindle the entrepreneur in each one of us, the way we desire it to unfold" “Innovations are not the only question being posed by the blink effect. What arises out of this entire discussion is also the psychological aspects of human intellect and managerial function. We often let our prejudice and predicaments rule supreme and in the end deny the same through carefully crafting out an excuse. This has resulted in us denying the concept of “intuition” as a made up concept. We have been quick to dismiss snap judgments as mere flukes or lucky guesses. We fail to acknowledge the existence of the sub-conscious as a higher and stronger governing force for us when it comes to taking a stand. It is obvious that the human psyche would fear accepting such a proposition as it shifts control from out of our hands and gives it over to the sub-conscious – an aspect we consider alien to our conscious minds" “More often than not it is better to be ignorant of certain aspects than to be too worked up over detail. The lesson comes from the simple fact that we experience more in life by being adventurous than by being cautious – one can always learn by trying and falling, but the possibility to learn does not exist for someone who just does not try due to too much of analysis and ultimately restricts oneself with the uncertainty of the outcome. Action is personified by the snap judgment, and reaction is the embodiment of deep cognition. It does not imply that one outscores the other, just that contextually both hold their relevance, and should be looked upon with due credibility"
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by Robyn Graubard http://lalanguedesoiseaux.tumblr.com/post/22461842844
Intuitive Decision Making “The idea that executives should make decisions according to what their intuition or “gut” tells them is generally out of favour. In a scientific age, one’s feelings are supposed to be mastered, while painstakingly collected megabytes of data reveal the correct path. And yet people continue to feel — intuitively, if you will — that this is an oversimplification. For many complex decisions, all the data in the world can’t trump the lifetime’s worth of experience that informs one’s gut feeling, instinct or intuition" (Matzler et al. 2007, 13)
“(…) what we call intuitive decision making is really one’s ability to recognize patterns at lightning speed — a process that often happens unconsciously. This is an especially important trait for complex decisions" (Matzler et al. 2007, 14)
“Complex decisions, however, bring into play a process in which knowledge, experience and emotions are linked, and this process is what people commonly think of when they hear the word “intuition" Research has found that people who have acquired deep wells of knowledge and experience — through their curiosity, openness and propensity to seize opportunities — are able to reach good “intuitive” decisions much more frequently than people who possess a relatively limited sphere of experience" (Matzler et al. 2007, 14) managementhelp.org/blogs/strategic-planning/2011/05/20/strategic-intuition/
“(…) intuition is a highly complex and highly developed form of reasoning that is based on years of experience and learning, and on facts, patterns, concepts, procedures and abstractions stored in one’s head” (Matzler et al. 2007, 14)
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"What makes the desert beautiful," says the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well" – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943
Open innovation models are being used widely even by large companies but start-ups feel inhibited in exploring such a platform in which reciprocities are well defined and sourcing of ideas from strangers is encouraged. What is the fear in learning from strangers?
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pooling sharing collaborating
www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5585735946/
Creative Commons – IPR How do I know whether my ideas are valuable, unless some others try to steal them?
Abishek Barua 2009 CINE Project Report
www.arduino.cc
opensourceecology.org
blog.makezine.com/2009/12/11/3d-printing-and-fabrication-open-so
openprosthetics.org
Open Source
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Patenting
“(…) defining and enforcing a tradable asset in new technological knowledge is also important because it encourages the evolution of a market in technology, and because it extends and increases incentives for investment in inventive activity to segments of the population that would otherwise find it difficult to directly extract returns from their technological creativity" (Khan & Sokoloff 2004, 395)
(…) the great inventors who had only primary or secondary education received as many (and often more) patents over their careers as did their peers with more extensive formal schooling. The technologically creative seem to have been able to accumulate the skills and knowledge necessary to operate at the frontier largely on their own, or through their work experience as apprentices or younger employees (…) The ability to obtain patents provided a means for individuals whose chief asset was technological creativity, or accumulated human capital that was conducive to inventive activity, to extract a return from their talents by focusing on invention" (Khan & Sokoloff 2004, 397398)
“We have demonstrated that those 19th-century skeptics who contended that only an elite segment was capable of truly important invention, and therefore that an extension of property rights in technology to the general population would have no beneficial effect on the pace of technical progress, were wrong. Although few of the celebrated inventors in Britain were of humble origins, by design such individuals were well represented among the great inventors of the United States. In the United States, this group was more likely to invest in inventive activity, not only because of the relatively lower cost of obtaining a patent, but also because the examination system facilitated the use of a patent as a general asset that could be sold licensed, or offered as collateral for finance. This latter feature was of profound importance for technologically creative individuals who lacked the financial resources to exploit inventions directly. In short, the patent system was a key institution in the progress of technology, but it also stands out as a conduit for creativity and achievement among otherwise disadvantaged groups" (Khan & Sokoloff 2004, 400-401)
Image: xplanes.tumblr.com
Charles H. Zimmerman 1947
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USHAHIDI
(Pascal Unger 2011 CINE Book Review of Tapscott & Wiliam’s Macrowikinomics)
“On Sunday, January 17, a full five days after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, a text message sent from a cell phone in Port-au-Prince was translated from Creole into English and posted on an interactive crisis mapping site that was being closely monitored by emergency respondents" “(…) While at first glance, it seems remarkable that someone could survive for full five days after such a devastating earthquake, at second glance it is very interesting to look at how the emergency respondents got to the text message and were able to save the person sending the message" “Within an hour of learning of the earthquake in Haiti, the people running Ushahidi, the crisis-mapping website, sprang into action. Ushahidi is a crisis-mapping website that allows users to submit eyewitness accounts or other relevant information in a disaster situation via e-mail, text or twitter. The website then visualizes the frequency and distribution of these events on the map. It was born in Kenya in 2008 when violence erupted in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed election in order to provide prove to these acts of violence, For the first time in history, interested parties could see at a glance which areas of the country were experiencing trouble by information that was not controlled by organization or government and could thus provide unbiased information. In the case of Haiti, Ushahidi allowed the respondents to specify their geographic area of interest as well as the type of alert such as collapsed building, medical emergencies and food shortages. Before Ushahidi, in crisis situations, big institutions and aid workers would parachute into a crisis, assess the situation and dispense aid with the very limited information they had. This would usually lead to money and more importantly wasted time and thus wasted opportunities. Ushahidi now provides the rescue teams with accurate and specific information from areas which are usually very hard to reach and this allows the rescue teams to deploy their resources according to the needs and allows them to proceed and move much faster. Another remarkable thing about the Haiti incident and the Ushahidi involvement evolved around the fact that a majority of the incoming text messages were in Creole while the rescue teams spoke English and thus needed translation. The people behind Ushahidi thus reached out to dozens of Haitian communities around the world and soon hundreds of volunteers across the globe were using the website to translate, categorize and geo-locate urgent life-and-death text messages in real-time. These volunteers also used Skype to relay critical information about the location of potential survivors to search-and rescue teams on the ground despite being thousands of kilometers away. As a result, Ushahidi’s crisis-mappers found themselves center stage in an urgent effort to save lives during one of the largest relief operations in history. After Haiti, Ushahidi has been used and been a great help in many other crisis showing how the web 2.0 can even safe people’s life in seemingly hopeless and catastrophic situations" “According to the authors, there is nothing that cannot be fixed if enough people that are like-minded connect and share their thoughts and ideas over the World Wide Web. This applies to any industry such as the ones with specific examples given in the book which are, amongst others, healthcare, finance, education, green energy, media, transportation and governments"
Democratizing Innovation
(Eric von Hippel 2005)
MFR USER
USER
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USER
USER
USER
MFR
USER
USER USER
USER USER USER The way it was: Producer-Innovators and Robinson Crusoe User-Innovators
The way it increasingly is: User innovation Collaboratives
“The Internet is enabling individual user innovators to join into user innovation collaboratives – an increasingly powerful competitor to manufacturer-based design" Needs: Good networking/collaboration infrastructure, adequate protection/sharing system for rich intellectual/creative commons.
Online Incubation Platform
Rohan Choudary & Shashank Jagarlamudi 2010 CINE Project Report 2010 “Present incubation cells work on a “come to” model, where stakeholders need to come to it rather than the incubation cell reaching out to them" “The online incubation centre leverages upon the strength of internet and other tools that can be build over it to bridge the geographic gap between innovators, researchers and investors and try to bring them on to a single platform at least virtually"
Choudary & Jagarlamudi, CINE Presentation 2010
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Choudary & Jagarlamudi 2010 CINE Presentation
Online Incubation Platform
Gaurav Singhal & Kitty Argawal 2011 CINE Project Report “Grassroots innovations and the innovators require many special protection mechanisms as well as trusted assistance in order to ensure that their innovation goes to market under their own name. We need to increase awareness regarding the immense potential of these innovations. India’s creativity and traditional knowledge lies tied up in these creations and there is an urgent need of a platform to uncover this potential by bringing various stakeholders together" “An online cell leverages the benefits of technology to enable real-time collaboration between innovators, researchers, VCs, experts etc. This realtime collaboration helps in bringing speedy solutions to problems faced in adding value to the innovation. It also helps in building trust between say, an innovator in India and a designer in Europe. This kind of intermingling of different cultures, ideas and backgrounds can result in unique and delightful value addition to the innovations that make them even more useful. Also, it helps to bring the grassroots innovator, staying in remote areas, into the fold of society outside his place of residence and also helps people in the formal sector understand their creativity and problems. Thus, both parties immensely benefit by entering a world and interacting with people whom they had always considered outsiders. The online platform also provides a safety net for both parties in such interactions by having experts who play the part of mediator or negotiator"
Online Incubation Platform
Ravi Subramanian 2010 CINE Presentation
“Since it is possible that many of the innovators might not have time to carry the innovation to commercialization or the inclination either, it becomes necessary to find a set of new champions who can take the innovation forward. This leads us to the concept of separating the innovation from the innovator wherein an online incubator is set up with all the stakeholders of societal innovation. This ecosystem enables separation of the innovation from the innovator to enable the innovation to go through the complete innovation value chain without the innovator sitting in the driver’s seat"
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“Some of the most useful innovations of our culture are lost in common knowledge"
“An outsider’s perspective may be essential in bringing an innovation to the fore"
“Being a part of another entrepreneur’s venture could help in one’s own venture"
Chaitanya Shravanthh & Ravleen Kaur 2011 CINE Presentation
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Ali Gulec – society6.com/artist/aligulec
YouSolve Timeline
PR, Assigning Mods & Building Platform
Launch of fanpage Start
1month
Launch of web-site, forums, QnA
Staged information dissemination of events at Major schools & corporate houses
3 month
Pitching Schools & corporate to allow more cross-institute & geographic collaboration. Selling points-Reach, results, mktg.
4 month
6 month
Promotion of platform, “How to” & Technical assistance at forums
12 month
Adding competencies, peer rating, participation summary in profile
Partnering with Cognizant for exclusive SME consulting (e.g include FII of IIMA, IIMB) 12 month
18 month
Collaborating with existing events and corporate to partner in the events
The aim is “to become a single platform connecting all the events & SME consulting with a diverse set of people and enabling participation"
YouSolve
2011 CINE Project Report by Avinash Reddy, Kushal Gupta, P Subhash Chandra, Rahul Yelisetti, Sharath Devasani, Sudeep Bagchi
“Crowdsourcing is an act similar to traditional outsourcing with the feature of outsourcing the work to the crowd. At present most competitions (case-studies, B-plans, development & testing applications, cover design) are institute-bound. These competitions restrict the user to form a team from a specific institute and/or geographic domain. But as we know that we live in a world where all the problems have multiple views of looking at it, these competitions do bring out good solutions but possibly not the best ones. We would gain grounds from the youth’s current familiarity with the internet and the culture of sharing. For enabling individuals from complementary backgrounds to form teams, it is now possible to leverage new technology of sharing and collaborating online. Google docs, Skype, Google Cloud connect, sketch are only few of the examples, some of which were not even available in early 2010 (Google cloud connect). The key innovation comes from the idea of using diversified teams (team members coming from disparate geographies/domain/institutes) to participate in competitions and to bring out the best solution possible. Our team suggests that using rewards/competitions and facilitating diversified teams can leverage the crowd’s potential in a better manner. For example an event related to a technology’s market potential will attract a group of technology grads, executives, market research practitioners and business graduates. We will create a website which will regularly update the existing competitions, prizes and will have built in support accessories like profile page of users, discussion forum and calendar. We also intend to build an online platform (which would also be available as thin client on desktop) for facilitating collaborative work"
A Short Video about YouSolve www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfmwG4nQrZ8 Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/YouSolve/120368564756767
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Reinventing the wheel is a waste of time and resources. Why not build upon each other?
"Research is for the society, and at the end of the day what matters is not the amount of papers lying on the desk, but the impact they have on the society, towards development"
www.techpedia.in
Shantam, A. 2011 CINE Project Report
“All men dream, but not equally. Those men who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the morning to find it was but vanity, but those men who dream by day – these are the dangerous men, for they dream with open eyes to make their dreams come true" - T.E. Lawrence
thesilverbird.tumblr.com
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Equity Based Model for the Growth of Artists
Ameya Upadhyay 2009 CINE Project Report
“It is often not realised that even the most famous artists find it extremely hard to make a profit even from their most popular albums. The record deals signed with “record labels” are often structured in such a way that the unsuspecting artists are robbed of most of the sales revenue" “(…) there is a great need for artists – especially budding artists to form an independent platform where they can sell their music DIRECTLY to the fans without intermediation from labels. This is exactly what I have chosen to suggest – such a model already exists in the United States called “www.sellaband.com” and I have looked at the ground level implementation in an Indian scenario of the same thought"
“Music lovers or believers are encouraged to sample the music and “invest” or contribute to the artist they believe will make it big in return for a claim to their revenues if and when their music is sold commercially"
• ”Once a predecided critical investment is reached the artists have a commitment with the believers and the hosting corporation to record their music for commercial marketing • Once the money is invested the believers and musicians become business partners and can accelerate promotions in tandem (face book, word of mouth etc.). The corporation hosting the platform also augments the promotion by offering incentives to believers contributing a certain minimum investment. • Once the music is released the revenue is split in three parts between the artists, believers and host. • Musicians have COMPLETE ownership and right for their music right form the start of recording the music. The corporation provides the support needed"
www.cherrybam.com/music-graphics3.php
Networks
Stephanie Nestel 2006 CINE Book Review of Dvora Yanow‘s Translating Local Knowledge at Organizational Peripheries
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“While I did an internship with Deutsche Bank AG, I had a hard time to gain all the knowledge by my own because everyone was busy and had no time to explain it to me. Therefore I started to write an Intern-Manual to provide next interns with all the necessary basic information in one handbook. This will save a lot of time for the future interns as well as for the employees. In our bakery we have a book where the salesladies can write down the name and appearance of customers, so that they can greet them with by name and all the other colleagues are able to learn the names, too. It is not necessary to have a computer-based platform it is also possible to have a paper-based knowledge network. Of course the best would be when people can meet personally and share their experience for example during shared lunch brakes etc. This will also help to increase the learning among them. It should be compulsory for higher management to attend these meetings at least occasionally. Most managers never visit the lowest level of organization and have no idea what the problems of those people are and therefore what the problems of the customers are. “ www.graphicart-news.com/wonderful-double-exposure-portraits/
The Medici Effect Tarun Argawal 2010 Book Reivew on Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect
“The author suggests some practical strategies for creating our own personal Medici Effect. These ideas focus on helping the reader lower her/his associative barrier. An important step is to expose oneself to diversity of cultures and environment. A person exposed to diverse contexts begins to realize that many of the presumed associations are artificial and dictated by local traditions. This realization weakens the natural hold of associative barriers in thinking. The second strategy is to actively attempt combining seemingly unrelated ideas. Randomly combining diverse ideas is an effective step to chance upon new innovations" “While associative thinking is efficient by helping us to analyze situations quickly, it inhibits broad based thinking. The benefits of associative thinking outweigh the opportunity costs as we carry out daily activities. But, for those focused on innovation, it is important to overcome their associative barriers" themedicieffect.typepad.com/stories/
“Another strategy is inspired by a key insight presented in the book. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the strongest correlation for quality of ideas is quantity of ideas. It is commonly believed that quantity leads to lowering of quality, but it may just be the opposite. Creating lots of ideas is likely the key to creating a few great ones. This concept mirrors Nassim Taleb’s ideas presented in his book The Black Swan. Taleb argues that transformational discoveries are unpredictable and improbable – so the best strategy is to expose oneself to lots of randomness so as to capture that chance of great innovation. For example, Johansson cites the musician Prince. While Prince has produced many legendary songs, he has produced a vault of thousands of other songs that have never been released" “(…) When an innovator attempts to combine disparate fields of study, the outcome is much less certain than incremental directional attempts. This uncertainty and greater risk of failure is the cost that must be borne if intersectional innovations are to be harnessed. In this context, the author propounds that “Successful execution of intersectional ideas does not come from planning for success, but planning for failure”. The key is to execute past one’s failures"
Open Innovation Abhay Kumar 2009 CINE Project Report
C “The external world has a lot to offer to firms …”
“Today, with the power of the internet, information sharing has become so easy and hard to resist that it’s become virtually impossible for firms to carry research and development on their own without information being leaked or without the external world knowing about it"
For instance, “Intel believes that small groups of likeminded people can work together only by common interest of research, not by physical proximity and that is possible by networking them through virtual workplaces"
issuu.com/david.dencker/docs/the_long_tail_innovation_model
“The Web is the World’s Sandbox” (Lovesh Vashist, CINE Class 2011)
Shared Movie Experience 2011 CINE Project Report by Dushyantha Kumar C, Sumit Saurav, Nafis Ahsan, Amit Bhasin, Nupur Gupta, Alix Fanneau
Business Idea An application/website which will allow users to watch movie with their friends who are geographically apart. Our aim is to simulate a virtual cinema hall online. Application will be absolutely free for users. Advertising will be the only source of revenue for us. Product Design Image below explains the product idea and the way the application is going to look.
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The Politics of Networked Innovation
“… innovations are not amenable to either top-down or bottom-up forms of management. Rather, this analysis suggests that understanding the politics of networked innovation depends on understanding the generative (and sometimes degenerative) relationship between power, knowledge integration, network formation and the role of technology. This relationship is schematically outlined in Figure 1, illustrating the contrast between the generative interplay of power, networks and knowledge integration found in the Healthco and Liftco cases, with the progressive unravelling of these same phenomena in Bankco. This comparison effectively underscores the important role of key actors in co-ordinating networks. Through effective network co-ordination, new sources of power – notably at the level of process and meaning – are created, which further reinforce the kinds of networking and knowledge integration which contribute to successful innovation outcomes" (Swan & Scarbrough 2005, 939)
(Swan & Scarbrough 2005, 939)
The Tipping Point Prithvish Chatterjee 2010 Book Review of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point – How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
“Gladwell defines the tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” – tipping points are essentially “the levels at which the momentum of change is unstoppable”. The possibility of sudden change is at the centre of the idea of this book" “Once Gladwell establishes the existence of such a radical world – the world in which the unexpected become expected – he goes further to dig the science behind this craziness. He attempts to unravel how such social epidemics manifest themselves; what causes them in the first place and what sustains them. Gladwell has come up with a scientific theory to explain this spread of this “social virus”. According to the book, there are three rules that help shape any idea into an epidemic scale – The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. “
“Stickiness is a unique quality that compels the phenomenon or idea to “stick” in the minds of the people and influence their future behaviour" “The Power of Context is another powerful rule (…). If the environment or historical moment in which a trend is introduced is not right, it is not as likely that a tipping point will be achieved" The cycle time for ideas to “tip” has greatly reduced. Such is the power of an epidemic triggered over social media like facebook, YouTube, etc. Of course, with great power comes greater responsibility; one needs to have the power of context well ingrained in the delivery of such messages especially on such open networks. Else, the ubiquity of this powerful media can make the recipients of such messages “immune” to the effects – and may lead to the death of the idea much before it reaches its “Tipping Point”!”
“(…) These so called “super infectors” are only a few – hence the Law of the Few – but they have an immense ability to spread the idea. These special individuals can be categorized either as Connectors, Maven or Salesmen. The Connectors are the ones that help connect diverse individuals and their ideas. The Mavens are individuals who have a strong desire to help others and Salesmen have a powerful charisma and can be extremely persuasive to achieve a defined goal" brooksreview.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/kony-20121.jpg
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Breakthrough Innovations Are breakthrough innovations the result of collaborative innovation efforts or created by lone inventors?
Collaborative inventors: “… collaborative inventors are exposed to more recombinant opportunities and hence are able to contrive a greater number of new combinations. A reason that collaborators have a higher average score than loners might be because collaborators help one another identify the most promising new combinations for further development: They make the selection stage of invention more rigorous, thus improving the average quality. Inventions by collaborators are also more likely to be adopted by others because there are a greater number of diffusion paths for that knowledge to travel. (For noncollaborative innovations, the lone inventor is usually the sole source of the necessary expertise.)“ (Lee Fleming 2007, pp. 70)
Lone inventors: “Because they are less constrained by convention and skeptical groupthink, lone inventors are more likely to invent (and not immediately dismiss) the radical breakthrough. Thus, lone inventors are less creative on average and yet are also more likely to come up with a breakthrough. In other words, lone inventors make fewer shots on goal, have lower scores on average and tend to score both very low and extremely high. They are on average both less successful – and more likely the source of breakthroughs" (Lee Fleming 2007, 71)
Many loners may not always win, but they at least don’t blame others when they fail.
Collaboration and Diversity “Brokerage occurs when a single individual is the hub through which all collaborators interact. The opposite structure of cohesion occurs when collaborators develop separate and independent relationships with one another that do not include a central individual" (Lee Fleming 2007, 71)
C “Neither brokered nor cohesive collaboration is inherently superior to the other; much depends on the organizational culture and the specific environment of the inventors. For example, although brokerage is better for the generation of new combinations, cohesion confers strong marginal benefits in collaborations that lack trust or involve fresh information" (Lee Fleming, 2007, 72)
“Many companies have noticed that diversity and breakthroughs seem to cooccur. Yet that goes against the advantages of specialization and focus. This apparent contradiction can be resolved by considering the histogram of inventive creativity. Diversity helps generate more shots on goal although, on average, those shots are less successful. But diversity also gives rise to new and unexplored combinations that increase the probability of a highly skewed breakthrough" (Lee Fleming 2007, 72)
(Lee Fleming 2007, 72)
thesilverbird.tumblr.com
Social Capital & Biodiversity Conservation
“Agricultural and rural conservation programs address biodiversity at three levels: agrobiodiversity on farms, nearby nature in landscapes, and protected areas. Recent initiatives that have sought to build social capital have shown that rural people can improve their understanding of biodiversity and agroecological relationships at the same time as they develop new social rules, norms, and institutions. This process of social learning helps new ideas to spread and can lead to positive biodiversity outcomes over large areas. New ideas spread more rapidly where there is high social capital. There remain many practical and policy difficulties, however, not least regarding the need to invest in social capital formation and the many unresolved questions of how the state views communities empowered to make their own decisions. Nonetheless, attention to the value of social relations, in the form of trust, reciprocal arrangements, locally developed rules, norms and sanctions, and emergent institutions, has clearly been shown to deliver a biodiversity dividend in many contexts. This suggests a need to blend both the biological and social elements of conservation" (Pretty & Smith 2004, 631)
“The tribal dominated Mewar region of Rajasthan (...) harbours a vast diversity of vegetation. It includes subtropical evergreen forest of
Boswellia serrata, Diospyros melanoxylon, Dendrocalamus strictus, Bombax cieba, Madhuca indica, Tectona grandis, Anogeissus latifolia and Balanites aegyptiaca. These forests are inhabited by the major tribes of the state, viz. Bhil, Garasia, Damor and Kathodia. The
surrounding plants form an integral part of culture of these people and the information about plants is passed on from generation to generation only through oral folk lore, although it is often kept secret" (Katewa et al. 2004, 41)
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Swarm Intelligence thephotobook.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/lukas-felzmann-swarm/
“Social Insects work without supervision. In fact their team work is largely self-organized, and coordination arises from the different interactions among individuals in the colony. Although these interactions might be primitive, taken together they result in efficient solutions to difficult problems. The collective behaviour that emerges from a group of social insects has been dubbed “Swarm Intelligence”. (Harvard Business Review, May 2001)
“In swarm intelligence, simple rules for individuals result in surprisingly complex group behaviour" (Paroksh Gupta & Roushni Agrawal 2011 CINE Presenation)
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society6.com
And what about dissent?
Is the issue how much of social connectivity or what kind of social connectivity, which makes a difference to the quality of a knowledge network? Are we not part of several knowledge networks?
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living & building pouretrebelle.com
masdarabudhadistudy.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/26masdar-graphic-custom12.jpg
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Ithewondrous.com/masdar-city-photos-worlds-first-sustainable-zero-carbon-zero-waste-city
Sustainable Disneyland?
www.elliedavies.co.uk
dansim.tumblr.com/post/9676449571
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Are not people with high social connectivity often poor in ideation and innovation? How much isolation is necessary to nurture fresh ideas? suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com
grofjardanhazy.tumblr.com/post/4062787566/warsaw-1946-michael-nash-ap
Urban Innovation Engines “An ‘Urban Innovation Engine’ is a system which can trigger, generate, foster and catalyze innovation in the city" (Dvir & Pasher 2004, 21)
“We suggest that what Innovation Engines really do is to create Conversations – which are the foundation of most innovations" (Dvir & Pasher 2004, 16)
D “THE UNIFYING PRINCIPLE - CONVERSATIONS: According to Nonaka’s spiral model of knowledge creation (1998), the process is based on the conversion of knowledge: - Combination: From explicit knowledge to explicit - Internalization: from explicit to tacit - Externalization: from tacit to explicit - Socialization: from tacit to tacit. Conversation (including contemplation, which is an inner conversation) is instrumental to these four knowledge conversion phases. Ideas are created at conversations (and contemplation) , and are enhanced and developed through conversations. Alan Webber argues that “Conversations inside and outside the company are the chief mechanism for making change and renewal an ongoing part of the company’s culture” (quoted from Stewart, 2001). Therefore, they are a core element of an Innovation Ecology" (Dvir & Pasher 2004, 20-21)
solidgoldcreativity.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/conversations.jpg
ecosalon.com/25-photos-of-urban-green-spaces/
Together, we can do it, alone we can wait for it to be done by some else.
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Dominic Wilcox
How many innovations do we know which grew into products and services without creation of knowledge networks?
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i learn
we learn www.thedirtfloor.com/2011/01/23/hand-painted-street-art-from-downtown-los-angeles/
The Impact of Curriculum on Intelligence & Creativity
(Jagajit Turuk 2010 CINE Project Report)
“Intelligence and creativity are often equated with each other but are not really the same thing. Studies have shown that intelligence and creativity have little correlation, i.e. a highly intelligent person may not be very creative. Intelligence refers to the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge while creativity refers to the richness of ideas and originality of thinking. (‌) India has lesser number of subjects which impact creativity than China and Finland and there are no compulsory subjects which impact bodily, inter personal, musical and spatial intelligence. Hence on average Indian students can be expected to be less intelligent than their Finnish and Chinese counterparts. Similarly an Indian student would be expected to be less creative. However when Finland and China are compared, even though they have the same subjects in the curriculum, Finnish students are found to be more intelligent. This could be primarily because the subjects which impact creativity are optional in China, the method of education is still focused on rote and memory and there is inordinate pressure to perform than learn. India as a country can take lessons from these countries and design a curriculum which would allow for learning that would create a more intelligent and creative youth. Dance, music and sports etc need to be introduced in the curriculum and should be encouraged and taught like any other subject like mathematics and science"
Academia & Creativity
“Unfortunately, in the academic world—where much of today’s scientific innovation takes place—researchers are encouraged to maintain the status quo and not “rock the boat" This mentality is pervasive, affecting all aspects of scientific research from idea generation to funding to the training of the next generation of scientists" (Southwick 2012 The Scientist) “The results of this suppression of creativity are not limited to the world of grant-funded research. The same leadership that fosters the status quo in research also affects the classroom. A university education is supposed to teach students how to think critically. However, that goal has been set aside in many of our classrooms, being traded for the less ambitious goal of memorizing facts. Curiously, when the rote memorization is emphasized, creative students are often penalized. Multiple-choice exams are the standard for testing a student’s ability to memorize facts, and creative students are usually not adept at guessing what a test writer is thinking. They are much better at solving problems, generating hypotheses, designing protocols, and developing a deep understanding of their discipline—all key aspects of good critical thinkers and professionals in science. By rewarding those students who accept the current facts as gospel, rather than skills that are likely to lead to the creation of knew knowledge, universities are stifling the next generation of scientists" (Southwick 2012 The Scientist) scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/11/confocal_image_of_cochlea_wins.php
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We are told to operate by Scientific method The painstaking collection of facts The repeated performance of experiment Until generalizations emerge. But is this really how scientists operate? Does it do justice to the search for pattern, the imagination, the construction of language to describe? Does it allow for the way we are intimately bound up with what we describe, the unity-in-estrangement of man and nature? Science is a response to Nature, leaping in imagination form the mind of the scientist. Science is a search, not for certainty which is never reached, but for unity and pattern in the universe, Science is the attempt to become one with Nature in knowledge and understanding. Science is not a model, but a living language of Nature! K. Roby
The Scientific Outlook
Ankur Gur 2011 CINE Book Review of Bertrand Russell‘s The Scientific Outlook
“The author points out that the purpose of science as a means of acquiring knowledge is getting blurred in modern times and it is being used more and more as a tool for manipulating nature" “One necessary condition pointed out by the author for a scientific civilization to be responsible is to have proportionate increase in wisdom as the scientific knowledge increases. Hence progress in science alone cannot make the civilization progressive although it is one of the necessary ingredients for overall progress of the civilization. The book argues that to some extent the scientific attitude is unnatural for mankind as most of the thought process is generally dedicated to wish fulfilment. There is a clear distinction between a scientific and an unscientific opinion. In case of scientific opinion we have a reason to believe that it is true while the unscientific opinion is held for a belief separate from the reason for it being a probable truth" “It has been pointed out that in certain schools of sociology the intelligence of an individual is highly neglected and never recognized for all the scientific developments which the society is enjoying today and all credit is attributed in general to impersonal causes. The author believes that this is a sorry situation and most of today's technological advances can be attributed to great men who existed in the seventeenth century and he thinks of Galileo as chief or the head of this group of men" "In the existing, state of science, no facts and no hypotheses are isolated ; they exist within the general body of scientific knowledge. The significance, of a fact is relative to such knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law: for science though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general" (Bertrand Russell) “(…) the details of geography and history are generally presupposed by science. Certain things are considered as brute facts are never questioned. But observed carefully we find that these brute facts contain the inference making process on part of us and it may or may not be correct. This is justified with a nice example of a student refusing the existence of Napoleon in a history class and getting punished. As a pragmatist he or she will accept on face value that Napoleon existed but as a student of science he or she will believe that had there been a strong support in favour of Napoleon's existence it would surely have got discussed in the class. The point is not that such support does not exist but that people are ignorant of that support and accept certain things on face value" “Finally the author talks about the scenario where the common man has started believing more and more in science while the scientist working in the laboratory is slowly loosing faith in science"
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Overcoming Boundaries and Structures
“If there are multiple ways of knowing the truth, could truth itself sometimes dance on its axis, i.e., there could be different ways of describing truth. Some of these ways become conjecture when one cannot make others see those ways. Local knowledge may have more abundant supply of such ways. But even the modern science has multiple interpretations co-existing without casting doubt on the ethics or efficiency of such contradictory positions to survive within the category of science. (…) Those who believe that traditional knowledge must necessarily be collective and passed on from generation to generation through cultural means may have as much to blame as those who believe that it emerges essentially through interaction with nature or through experimentation. None of these conditions need be true. Traditional knowledge of a blacksmith used while giving a temper to the sickle or the knife may have evolved through careful observation, experimentation, intuition, understanding of materials and development of some rules. This way may not be different from a scientific method except that the blacksmith may not be able to parameterize various steps in sharpening the knife or sickle. The scientific knowledge is not opposite of traditional or local knowledge in all respects. It could never be. The distinction has been drawn or demolished by academics whose interest lies in academic boundaries and institutional structures. When one interacts with people and learns from them and shares with them one’s own learning, the only issue is the ability to decipher each other’s metaphor to understand the same thing from similar observations. When farmers develop a method of dusting road side dust or ash on the cumin plants likely to develop disease because of the dew, some characterize this practice as local knowledge (and thus less scientific) and others figure out that dust absorbs the moisture and prevents it to remain for longer period on the leaf, creating conditions for the disease to occur. The farmer may not have described the process because he did not know, how little, we scientists really know about the logic of their functional practices. The local knowledge could be as reductionist as any institutional scientific approach and the holism could similarly be attempted in both the systems though with different degrees of accuracy or tenability of assumptions. A holistic worldview in a community context might include assumptions about the way animals think or behave which may be totally divorced from the way local scientists or technologists may think. And yet, outcome may be much better in some of the traditional knowledge systems than in the modern ones from the point of view of conservation" (Anil Gupta 2006)
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images.travelpod.com/tripwow/photos2/ta-0382-7cca-ba8d/blacksmith-shillong-india+13222391720-tpfil02aw-14104.jpg
www.makeitinmusic.com/music-good-enough/
Have we ever made Best the enemy of Better?
Creativity and Innovation in Riot-Affected Children of Ahmedabad Kumar Rahul Roushan 2007 CINE Project Report
“Gujarat riots (2002) changed the lives of thousands of children. Many of them lost their parents and relatives, and the worst aspect was that they saw them being murdered, maimed, raped and burnt before their eyes. Even a full grown adult male would be disturbed and traumatized after seeing such scenes. The effect on a tender psyche of a child is unimaginable" “According to a study on PTSD in children and adolescents affected by the riots, conducted in February 2006 by mental health professionals belonging to the Psychiatry Department of B J Medical College and Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad, close to five percent of the 255 interviewed showed signs of the disorder even four years after the riots, whereas 9.4 percent of them suffered from depression. Around 50 out of 255 showed symptoms of some disorder, which was not PTSD, but they needed medical help"
“Arzoo Centre is an initiative by Ms. Sulekha Ali and friends which was started in 2002, closely after the riots. Sulekha was herself hit by riots and had to take shelter in Shah-e-Alam camp, a temporary shelter for riot victims. Sulekha could see many children in that camp who were either orphaned or were rendered homeless due to riots. The days spent at Shah-e-Alam brought Sulekha and these children together. They used to play and talk to alleviate their misfortune and tried to put together pieces of their lives" “The best thing about the centre is that Hindu and Muslim kids study together, which doesn’t make it a ghetto where a person might grow up with imagined prejudices and threats from other communities"
“Apart from education, Arzoo centre imparts skill training to these children, which makes them explore the creative and innovative part of themselves. Children make beautiful handicrafts and paperwork which the centre puts on exhibition and they also help in generating some funds for meeting a small part of their expenses"
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Unlocking Children‘s Creativity
“(…) adults should monitor their evaluations in order to avoid prejudging the ideas which are given by children. Research suggests that judgments given by adults are often inaccurate, and these may contribute to the slumps found in the creative thinking of certain age groups. With this in mind, valuation – the effort toward appreciation – may be more important than critical evaluations, both for the gifted child and for his or her parents and teachers" (Runco 2004, 49)
Judging children is locking in a lot of creative potential to come up with outstanding ideas. However, when there are slumps, some children climb on top of hills to find the best place for wifi-internet. During the Honey Bee Network’s 27th Shodh Yatra at Singhari, the shodhyatris stayed in a highschool on the top of a small hill. The experience here was remarkable in many respects. There was a student, Rahul Kumar Mahato, who had figured out which hill top had the best internet availability. After passing a competition, he was given a password for a website from where he could download questions in different subjects every day. He submits the answer through a mobile phone and gets the response. Such a desire to learn and get feedback is rarely found even in cities. Here is a tribal boy who has created rigorous benchmarks for his learning every day. His sister was equally keen to explore opportunities for learning. When various innovations were shown to the children and others in the village through a cell phone based projector, there were many innovations that students wanted to implement or fabricate in their village. www.infobarrel.com/Teaching_Children_Science
Problem Based Learning
Ajay Goyal 2009 CINE Project Report
“(…) This school puts its philosophy on three pillars: Rigour, Relevance and Reflection. All of these apply to a problem based learning system in the school. ‘Rigour’ says that students should try to explore the problem, its reach and effects and ways to solve the problem. Students are asked to define the problem, discuss it in their groups and analyze the information associated with it. They are supposed to search for new information themselves. Teachers act as facilitators rather than instructors; students themselves carry out the entire discussion and ask the concerned people whenever needed. When they analyze a problem, they also include other problems linked to it. Thus the topic or problem is covered comprehensively in a logical flow pattern. ‘Relevance’ brings attention toward relevance of concepts, being taught, in practical life. This is ensured in two ways. First, the original problem is often derived from some real life scenario or problem. Students are encouraged to look around whether they are at home or school or market and question the processes, which are taking place there. “No question is useless”, is the main key of their philosophy. Second point of relevance comes when students are about to apply concepts to solve the problem. They are supposed to consider only those solutions, which are relevant for all and can be valid in practical life. ‘Reflection’ emphasizes the importance of reflection in the learning process. Listen, Understand, Use and Reflect; these are four steps of learning. Any knowledge is internalized best when we reflect on it. We can refine our internal knowledge by reflecting on it"
Have a look at Learning Without Frontiers: blip.tv/learning-without-frontiers
www.mobl21.com/blog/category/weekly-cartoon/page/2
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“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?” ― David Foster Wallace
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What do you see when you look hole
blog.vandalog.com/2010/03/page/5/
into the
in the wall ?
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www.educationinnovating.org
in the kabbalah chaos – tohu bohu – is simply a state in which order is latent the egg is the ’chaos‘ of the bird
- Colin Wilson www.ceskinner.com
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"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down" - Kurt Vonnegut
Not all the social capital embedded in knowledge networks is harnessed by an entrepreneur, but without harnessing such capital, can any enterprise ever survive?
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speaking writing reading suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com/post/21055821325/nevercertain-f-o-n-d-e-r
Overcoming Language Barriers
Amit Rathod, Innovator, Interviewed for CINE report by Aaditya Radoth, 2010
“… everyone who can read should be able to type" “Those who did not know English were automatically excluded from the benefits of the computing boom" “Devanagari text input presents unique challenges to the field of human computer interaction" “Initially some of my colleagues were not very keen on my decision to move away from QWERTY format. Their argument was since that format is so universally accepted and familiar to people at large, it would make better sense to come out with a new design which is not so distant from this design" “Even after filing the patent, one has to be very careful while displaying it in job interviews and conferences. I learned that hard way when a big MNC in the computer industry filed a patent and won a prestigious award for a very similar design right after I had displayed it in my job interview with them"
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fuckyeahbookarts.tumblr.com
Image: griiot.deviantart.com/art/homme-typo-30905609
Language Shapes the Habit of Thought
"It is not surprising therefore to find that the metropolitan elite all over the world reads the same novels, speaks the same language and has similar habits of thought in terms of their indifference to the goal of poverty elimination and generation of an unethical and accountable system of governance" (Anil Gupta 1995)
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How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think Lera Boroditsky (2009)
“For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity"
“People rely on their spatial knowledge to build other, more complex, more abstract representations. Representations of such things as time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions have been shown to depend on how we think about space"
‘Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space. This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit" One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance" If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello"’ “Look at some famous examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a woman"
“(…) linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives"
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Creativity in Bengali Literature Ranjit Saha 2006 CINE Project Proposal
“Literature is a mirror of society. It reflects the socio-cultural and political ideas of contemporary mind sets. As the society passes through several phases of continuous change over a period of time, so does literature. So, in a sense literature helps us to put the bygone era in a proper perspective. The creativity in the fertile landscape of Bengali literature is well recognized. Over the centuries it has witnessed several experimentations, and it still continues its journey. The first ever literature in Bengali- Charyapada or Charyageeti, dates back to eighth century. Gradually the literature had to go through several phases; some of them have had a great impact in shaping the style of the Bengali literature. In the Court’s of Arakan dynasty the contribution of Muslim poets, during 17th century, in Bengali literature had brought a drastic change to the 15th century Vaishnabi Sahitya.
The project would be focused to study the evolution of Bengali literature over the centuries- starting from the eighth century creation – Charyapada, to current creations of the twenty-first century. The project would strive to find out the trend of changing experimentation with literature and how successful it has been in attaining the objective of being a mirror of contemporary thoughts of general mass at large. It would study how the literature shifted its focus from glorifying religious beliefs and lives to picturization of real Bengali life; and the modern theme of human mind and its analysis. Along with this, the project would also study the present situation of children literature that had once reached its pinnacle in terms of variety of taste and experimentation in the hands of veteran writers like Sukumar Ray and Satyajait Ray. This will also encompass the role of current teenage magazines and the penetration of internet on the changing trend of Bengali literature"
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Amanda Nelson collected 40,000 pieces of junk mail, folded and bundled them together. www.amandanelsen.com
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www.amandanelsen.com
http://lossofgrasp.com . . .
digital poetry ... directory.eliterature.org
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www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/ounce-dice-trice
www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/ounce-dice-trice
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www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/ounce-dice-trice
nesbeth.blogspot.in/2011/02/dorito-narrative.html
The Narrative Fallacy
Vibuti Rathore 2011 CINE Book Review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable
‘Taleb questions our reliance on the "narrative fallacy"; that is the way we use past information to analyse the causes of events when actually so much history does not exist or is silent. It is this gap - the missing energy in the historical system, which produces the black swan. He gives an example with the problem of turkeys: "Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for its best interests', as a politician will say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief"’
“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt" (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) nesbeth.blogspot.in/2011/02/dorito-narrative.html
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furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
ancient silent pond a frog leaps in the sound of water
Matsuo Basho (1686)
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Imrcooksfinal.blogspot.in/2010/05/matsuo-bashos-frog-haiku.html
Do potential clients or customers always know best what is needed by them? Under what conditions do we put faith in ‘supply creating demand’?
Nick Tassone – Conjurers - suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com
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thehindu.com
Chandralekha – ‘Hybrid’ Indian Dance www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2820364.ece www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR2Um0sljkw
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www.ithunter.org/2011/04/pina-bausch-wim-wenders/
Pina Bausch – ‘Hybrid’ Western Dance www.pina-film.de/en/trailer.html
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“Rotational inertia indicates how difficult it is to start an object spinning (or to stop it, if it's already spinning) - It depends on the mass of the object - The greater the mass, the greater the rotational inertia - It also depends on how far the mass of the object is placed from the rotation axis -If this distance is doubled, the rotational inertia gets quadrupled! -If no torque is applied, the angular momentum stays the same -So since angular momentum = rotational inertia times angular velocity, the greater the rotational inertia, the smaller the angular velocity!“ (Natalia Kuznetsova 2003 CINE Project Report)
A Dancer’s Body Evolution “Increased technical demands required new body looks" (Natalia Kuznetsova 2003 CINE Project Report)
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apricot.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/high-insteps-high-arches-ballet-feet/
“Ballet dancers have not always been held to this standard. In the 19th and early 20th century, bodies and feet were not always pushed to the extremes that are now sought after. Not only did dancers from these days tend to be just a tad more voluptuous, in my opinion, but the expected en pointe look was also quite different. [Beneath], we can see that Spessivtseva’s left (standing) foot is en pointe, but she is not quite over the box of her shoe. (The box is the rectangular-ish part of the shoe that encloses the toes and forefoot.) These days, it is expected of ballerinas that they will be able to get over the box of the shoe. A good arch makes this possible, and a high instep enhances the look. As the 20th century progressed, dancers bodies became thinner, more streamlined, more elongated, more flexible, faster, and so on" (http://apricot.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/high-insteps-high-arches-ballet-feet/)
www.sristi.org/cultural
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost" - Martha Graham
Dance in India: From Evolution to Innovation Twisha Anand 2009 CINE Project Report
‘There is a need in the field of dance to encourage creativity and innovation in order to keep the dance forms in a continuously evolving stage. Art is expression and freedom and any form of stagnation in art would lead to the demise of the art form. Thus, there is a need for forces encouraging innovation in dance in the country. India has produced the greatest dancers of all times and the amount of talent and knowledge in the country calls for an innovative and experimental approach. The future lies in co-existence of the traditional and the modern. In the words of Ms. Mrinalini Sarabhai, “Many dancers are experimenting with new ideas in dance. This is good as long as the tradition also is kept alive and the choreographers know and respect those roots" She continues on the issue of innovators in dance and fairness to classical arts as, “There is no fairness about it. One either is an innovator or not. It is not something that can be learnt. There is no danger to the classical arts. Our heritage is very strong" Dance has been an ancient art and is embedded strongly into the Indian roots. Classical dance has given a unique place to India in the global arts scenario. The field will undoubtedly be enriched with more innovations and creations in the dance forms, taking dance to a new presentation level and giving it a new purpose each day. Ms. Mrinalini Sarabhai predicts the future of dance as, “The dance will continue growing into new dimensions of beauty in form and truth in expression. And the dancer will continue to give more and more expressions to the sentiments of love. And the heroines of the classical dance will continue to be the nayikas of today"’ www.sristi.org/cultural
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rerylikes.tumblr.com
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once" - Friedrich Nietzsche
Enablers of and Boundaries to Creativity in Sports – A Mirror to Understanding Creativity in Society? Maximilian Brandt 2006 CINE Project Proposal
“Sports do not only capture human interest, fascination, aspirations and emotions they also provide the stage for people to change roles and behaviour. It can be more than a means to spend time and exercise the body but also enable individuals to express themselves in ways that differ from their ordinary, day to day routines. In this context humans will often look for ways to increase their efficiency and to enhance their competitiveness and in many cases continue to find ever novel ways of approaching the challenges of their specific discipline. Within this context I will try to set the scene for understanding in which various ways and on which levels creativity and innovation influence and/or change a disciplines and how both creativity and innovations are fostered or prohibited by the rules and standards of the different sports. In a second step I would like to relate the different solutions back to the overall society and try to understand if and how sport can be used as a metaphor for a society’s approach to creativity and innovation"
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www.graphicart-news.com/12-amazing-women-designers/
The Zitar
Chinmay Bhagwat & Maruti Konduri 2011 CINE Project Report
“With more and more globalization, many cultures are intermingling. Fusion music is an excellent medium to bring different cultures together. It blends the pleasing elements of different genres of music from different parts of the world to create a new, much fuller and more engrossing form of music. Niladri Kumar, a well-known personality in Indian classical and fusion music, has been touring the last few years with his own creation - the Zitar - an electric sitar. A modified sitar with lesser number of strings and pickups just like an electric guitar, plugged into a guitar effects processor is indeed a marvelous innovation. Now, Niladri does popular fusion concerts besides the regular classical sitar recitals. Niladri's Sitar-funk concerts with musicians representing both Indian and western music are truly enjoyable" ‘Niladri Kumar started playing fusion with the traditional sitar in his early days. As a youngster he listened to rock & pop music also and got immense exposure to harmonies through film music. Thus a certain sound and tone got engraved in Niladri’s music and playing style. Regarding the cause and need for his innovation Niladri says “...[you] need to have the mindset of wanting to do something ... So many things have been done, you just need to resurface them back,” and “Creativity is usually there and one might just not know about it … If you have a will, then you will innovate!”‘ “With a number of iterations and a lot of trial and error, Niladri ended up creating an electric sitar called the Zitar. The interesting aspect and
also the key differentiating factor here is that it does not try to imitate the sound of a traditional sitar like many other electronic sitar simulators do. This is similar to the fact that an electric guitar has a sound very distinct from an acoustic guitar and both have their own place in music"
“Niladri faced many technical difficulties while building the instrument. The journey started with an amateur guitarist friend named Aslam Khan. They used to experiment with their sitars and guitars. Starting off with ripping the pickups out of an electric guitar and mounting them on a sitar, they could see that this could probably work and something can be made out of it. Thereafter, began the numerous visits to various guitar repair shops and the instrument got refined. Nine years ago, many parts were not even available in India and had to be sourced from abroad" “The present look of the Zitar is an evolution of 9 years. The instrument has only 5 strings and no sympathetic strings like a traditional sitar. Electric pickups are used just like an electric guitar and Niladri uses the Zitar with a standard guitar effects processor that many guitarists themselves use. It is amazing to see the kind of stuff Niladri can do with his Zitar. From pull-offs and hammer-ons to legatos – he can pretty much use every guitar technique on the Zitar besides all the traditional sitar playing styles which he is already a master at"
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Nilradi Kumar with his Zitar
Pennao
Jilatombi Singh (craftsman, singer, musician), Kennedy Singh (musician cum theatre artist) and Bhagat Singh (small contractor), three music lovers from Imphal have improvised the traditional instrument “pena” into pennao by changing the number of bundle strings and modifying the bridge arrangement. This arrangement allows the Pennao to play a wide range of musical notes, without losing the original and distinctive sound of the traditional Pena. The three friends have a common vision, to establish a Pena Music School at Imphal. Pena is one of the most popular musical instruments of the Meitei community and is used in a variety of social and cultural events. The uniqueness of the pena lies in its distinctive sound which is quite different from any other fiddle and string instruments. The three have worked together to improve the pena to enable it to play classic and modern music. To increase the range they tried to introduce two to three strings. Cow‘s hide/cow‘s skin was used to make the belly of the pena. To keep the identity of the sound they kept the same skin as before. Pennao, the modernised version of the pena has three strings and can produce lower octave, middle octave and upper octave. It can be used as a folk musical instrument, classic and modern musical instrument. Further it can also be used in the orchestral music as violin and it can be easily tuned to required scale by using new technologies. NIF has filed a patent in the name of the innovators.
“Amongst musical phrases are some which do more than please our musical faculty. They stir other elements in us; they reverberate throughout a larger part of our being. Certain emotions and expectations are aroused beside those that accompany our reactions to pure music. And the sequences of such phrases, besides satisfying our musical faculty’s criteria of coherence and fitness, also satisfy these other expectations, give a natural development to these other emotions, continue, by a process of organic growth, this wilder life that has been awakened in us" - J. W. N. Sullivan
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The Invention of Depth of Focus
Elena Zahariev 2010 CINE review of the movie Citizen Kane “After Citizen Kane, cinema would never be the same again. The revolution initiated by a 25 year old man [Orson Welles] disrupted all established codes of cinematography. The innovation appears in the way the story is being told (with the use of multiple flash backs) and also in the physical film techniques used. The most innovative technical aspect of Citizen Kane is the extended use of deep focus. This invention unsettled the viewing public but not the critics who recognized the precursory genius of the new‐born director"
“The phrase depth of focus was historically used to mean depth of field. The depth of field of a scene is influenced by the focal length and the diaphragm aperture. It defines how much the background, midground and foreground will appear in the screen with an acceptable sharp focus. A deep focus is generated with a very small iris aperture and the camera focuses on a distant point. The innovation could be achieved thanks to the genius of Orson Welles but also thanks to his meeting with a young operator called Gregg Toland. At this period, using the focus this intensely was a revolution. Gregg Toland had to find some innovative techniques to obtain the depth of focus Welles’ wanted. The diaphragm was largely closed and thus, there was a lot of light. Then, they chose to put some shadow parts, which was new in a Hollywood movie. They also cheated on the size of the objects on the foreground in order to accentuate a little more the depth. The genius of Orson Welles consists of manipulating the viewer with unrealistic images to convey emotions and to strengthen his messages"
"Nothing belongs more fully to an artist than his creation - even if you give him your youth, your money, your love, your courage, nothing belongs to you" — Consuelo de Saint ExupÊry
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www.urbanautica.com
www.urbanautica.com
“Films are made, the images are made when there’s no one looking. That’s what the invisible is, that which we don’t see. That’s what the incredible is, that which we don’t see. And cinema shows you that which we don’t see, the incredible" Jean-Luc Godard
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“When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn’t explain. What should he explain anyhow ? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside" Ingmar Bergman
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“In a sense all film is entering into someone else’s dreams" David Lynch www.toutlecine.com
“The Next Big Thing” “In 1996, Frenchman Herve Perdriolle began a collection of Indian tribal art, leveraging it later as a curator, to pitch the contemporary alongside the traditional, folksy or tribal — take your pick — not without some degree of success. In the bargain, he did what governments in India have failed to do despite their many awards and recognitions for tribal arts and crafts: focus attention on art forms that are dynamic as well as contemporary despite having a tradition in their folk roots. And yet, Indian “tribal” art has a long way to go before it can start matching the likes of Australian Aboriginal artist Clifford Possum whose auction record of Rs 11 crore has an extremely low parallel in Warli artist Jivya Some Mashe, who at Rs 9.8 lakh is currently India’s highest auction price holder. Madhubani “master-artist” Sita Devi, who died in 2005, would have found it hard to imagine a canvas, or even a commission, netting her or her kin even Rs 1 lakh despite being feted around the world. And Gond wonder-boy Jangarh Singh Shyam, who committed suicide at the remote Mithila Museum outside Tokyo in July 2001, sold works for a few thousands despite countries and collectors expressing themselves amazed at his talent" (Kishore Singh, Business Standard, Aug 18th 2010) www.business-standard.com
kostisvelonis.blogspot.in/2010/11/blog-post.html
Does Use of Contemporary Material Prevent Us from Accessing Traditional Meanings Underneath? Indigenous knowledge needs not essentially be traditional in nature. Contemporary knowledge serving indigenous ends, or using indigenous materials or processed through indigenous rules or heuristics can also be part of indigenous knowledge systems provided it is interpreted through local cultural meanings. A string of plastic beads (modern material) coloured and shaped in traditional designs, put in synthetic strings (modern material) can be used for traditional fashion, ceremonies or rituals. Knowledge of how many beads be there in a string may have evolved over a long period of time. Just because a certain kind of knowledge is indigenously produced does not make it necessarily virtuous or even a preferred mode of expression. Not all aspects of indigenous knowledge are worth preserving or sustaining. The tragic and most dishonourable practices of killing a female fetus or a newborn child through local/indigenous practices, pursued often by women, must be annihilated through modern education as well as regulatory institutions (see www.itsagirl.com). There is, however, a greater probability of local knowledge being more in tune with the local environment and cultural context. (Gupta 2006)
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www.artchive.com/glyphs/kandinsky/index.html
What is the Colour of Music?
“Sad, Unloved Lines that Hug the Edge of the Frame”
“Lines also have an affinity for certain colors. Bold, dynamic lines like diagonals get a bold color like yellow. Less drastic diagonals get a less drastic color, red. Dead lines that are nearly horizontal get a dead color like black. Slightly active lines like verticals get a dull color like blue. Kandinsky even has a theory about coloring lines according to their centrality in the composition. Lines in the middle get yellow. Sad, unloved lines that hug the edge of the frame should get dull colors" (Edouard Nuttin 2010 CINE Project Report) Image: Edouard Nuttin 2010 CINE Report
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www.torgeirhusevaag.com/english/prosjektsider/kart/medalland_02.html
A duet made up of finn-whale song and sonar pulse.
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www.lascaux.culture.fr histsociety.blogspot.in/2011/09/lascaux-staffordshire-and-serendipity.html
suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com
“There is nothing, perhaps, in our everyday life which appeals more to the mind than colour, yet so accustomed are the generality of mankind to its influence that but few stop to inquire the “why and wherefore” of its existence, or its cause" - Colour Measurement and Mixture by Captain W. de W. Abney, published 1891
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amix.dk/blog/post/19480
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“The only companies or products that will succeed now are the ones offering the lowest possible level of complexity for the maximum amount of value" (Aaron Levie 2012)
Zahariev 2010 CINE Project Report
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intentionally blank with five words
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deskarati.com/2012/03/27/maurits-cornelis-escher
Day and Night – Maurits Cornelis Escher
Some of the most precious moments of our life are those in which we undertake non reciprocal acts (that is in which no body can pay us back, for whatever good we may do for others) and yet a large part of our life is spent in most calculative acts. Is it surprising that many of us always find true happiness so elusive? How do start-ups embed larger social purpose in the DNA of the enterprise?
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Are Humans Capable of Real Altruism? “… numerous human behaviours seem anomalous from the evolutionary point of view" “Where human behaviour is concerned, the distinction between biological altruism, defined in terms of fitness consequences, and ‘real’ altruism, defined in terms of the agent's conscious intentions to help others, does make sense. (Sometimes the label ‘psychological altruism’ is used instead of ‘real’ altruism.) What is the relationship between these two concepts?” “Ordinarily we think of altruistic actions as disinterested, done with the interests of the recipient, rather than our own interests, in mind. But kin selection theory explains altruistic behaviour as a clever strategy devised by selfish genes as a way of increasing their representation in the gene-pool, at the expense of other genes. Surely this means that the behaviours in question are only ‘apparently’ altruistic, for they are ultimately the result of generic self-interest? Reciprocal altruism theory also seems to ‘take the altruism out of altruism’. Behaving nicely to someone in order to procure return benefits from them in the future seems in a way the antithesis of ‘real’ altruism — it is just delayed self-interest" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2008, Biological Altruism)
“But when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" Matthew 6:3
Doctor Hudson--if you had a small, inadequate brick house, and decided to give yourself more room, what would you need for your building? . . . More brick. . . . If you had a small, inadequate steam-engine, you would want more steel to construct larger cylinders--not a different kind of steel to house a different kind of steam, but merely more room for expansion. . . . Now--if you had a small, inadequate personality, and wanted to give it a chance to be something more important, where would you find the building materials?“ He seemed waiting for a reply, so I humoured him. "Well--according to the drift of your argument, I presume I would have to build it out of other personalities. Is that what you're driving at?“ "Pre--cisely!" he shouted. "But--not 'out of!' . . . Into! . . .Glad you said that, though; for it gives me a chance to show you the exact difference between the right and wrong methods of making use of other people's personalities in improving one's own. . . . Everybody is aware, instinctively, that his personality is modified by others. Most people go about imitating various scraps and phases of the personalities that have attracted them--copying one man's walk, another's accent, another's laugh, another's trick of gesture--making mere monkeys of themselves. . . . This theory I am talking about doesn't ask you to build your personality out of other personalities, but into them!“ "I'm afraid all that's too deep for me," I admitted befuddledly.
- Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas, 1929
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The Selfish Gene
Chittaranjan Samantaray 2011 CINE Book Review of Richard Dawkins‘ The Selfish Gene
“Dawkins had a gene-centered view of evolution and coined the term "selfish gene". The gene centered view gives rise to the hypothesis that the more two people are genetically related, the more it is likely that they behave altruistically with one another"
“When genes are described as being “selfish”, it is not implied that the genes are driven by any motive or will. However, their effects seem to be driven by them. The genes that get passed on serve the implicit interest of getting replicated, not of the organism. This view explains altruism at the individual level in nature, especially in kin relationships. When an individual sacrifices its own life to protect the lives of kin, it is acting in the interest of its own genes. It seems altruism at the individual level emerges only because of the selfishness of the sets of genes along with millions of years of evolution. Saving your ten brothers from a certain death at the expense of your own life might mean a lot to your genes, because the probability that 50% of your genes are to be found in every brother of yours means that your death will save five more times copies of some of your genes than they would be saved if you would have left your brothers to die"
"The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable" — Rabindranath Tagore
www.facebook.com/MotherEarthIndia
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"I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things" — Rabindranath Tagore
The Great Gatsby
Gaurav Bhati 2011 CINE Book Review of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby
H “The lesson to learn is that the power of wealth and materialistic interests may very often win over the superior values of morality, honesty and stability. Surely, corruption of values did not first appear in the 1920s and it certainly did not disappear in the following decades. The reality is that humans are inclined to deliberately exchange maxims of morality and spiritual principles for shallow, but very comfortable benefits of wealth and status" suffering-in-the-labyrinth.tumblr.com/
childrenwitharsenic.tumblr.com
Pay It Forward
Pritika Padhi 2010 CINE Review of the movie Pay It Forward “Firstly, the idea of Pay It Forward is in itself a fascinating one. It is based on the “guilty conscience” principle: we all expect kindness and favours from those we know, but when someone we do not expect a favour from does us one, there is guilt weighing on our conscience – guilt about not deserving the favour – and we will not sit in peace till we can take this feeling of guilt to some conclusion. Generally, we try to return the favour so as to balance the scales. However, it is not always possible to find an opportunity to return the favour to 1 person. But if we look around us, there are opportunities everywhere, of doing a favour to so many around us. Hence, Pay It Forward. If we pay it back, we are restricting the goodness between 2 people. If we pay it forward, we are spreading this chain of goodness to include more people"
“The realm of possibility exists where? – in each of you, here, in your minds. You can surprise us, each of you, or you can sit back and let it all be atrophy"
“There’s a world out there and even if you decide you don’t need it, it’s still going to hit you right in the face. So, it’s best you start thinking, about the world and what it means to you. What does the world expect of you? You, Trevor, what does the world expect of you?” “Nothing"
“But not all feel the guilt of the conscience that strongly. Some people manage to suppress this guilt and move on with live. Do them a favour and their cynicism will see no good intent in it. They do not feel compelled to return the favour – either forward or backward. How does Pay It Forward work in this case? Here lies the second most important lesson. Pay It Forward is not just a do-good tool. It is a powerful personal development philosophy. It teaches one patience and endurance. Results will not be forthcoming. We will not see the world change. We may not even see our neighbourhood change. No one may take us seriously. Or, as shown in the movie, the kid manages to affect a huge change but himself gets killed in a school fight – we might better one part of the world, but the other parts may come and hit us right in the face. Alone, we do not amount to much. Yet, we must believe in ourselves, have faith in our purpose"
“Many a times, age and experience weigh on our minds and rob us of qualities like curiosity, willingness to take risks, openness to new ideas and experiences and courage to explore the unknown. It is important to retain the child in us, for it is the child that sees hope and possibilities where the adult mind is constrained by norms and responsibilities"
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Many start-up ventures don’t grow because the entrepreneur does not have a clear business model in mind. The line between personal and firm’s accounts are not clearly drawn. Team building is a very critical component of setting up an enterprise. How do we choose partners and how much openness do we maintain in the team, how do we handle break-ups?
mariehelenesirois.blogspot.ca/2012/03/edourad-martinet.html
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synergising
Knowledge of Biology “The need for an optimum knowledge of biology has become fundamental for everyone. This knowledge has become indispensable to making personal choices and participating in social and democratic life. At the same time, broad-sweeping debate on exploring the living world would avoid numerous fears and confusions continuing to spread through society; it would avoid political indecision in the field and distrust with regard to biological research. Without biological benchmarks, an individual is as illiterate today as if, at the turn of the century, he didn't know how to read" (Giordan 2004) “Learning is a complex function, and can't be reduced to a single model. Owing to the number of its aspects, it even presents multiple paradoxical components. For example, the individual understands, learns through his conceptions. They are the only tools he masters, it's through them that he decodes reality and the information he receives. But they are also his intellectual "prisons" which enclose him in a way of understanding the world. Another paradox, the individual has to learn on his own, and no-one can do it for him, but the learner has little chance of discovering on his own the set of elements which can modify his questions, his concepts or his relation with the knowledge" (Giordan 2004)
www.fastcodesign.com/1669657/how-do-you-create-a-culture-of-innovation
Symbiosis
Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation
“One of the most spectacular examples of a symbiosis is between the siboglinid tube worms and symbiotic bacteria that live at hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. This is a mutualistic symbiosis where the worm completely loses its digestive tract and is solely reliant on their internal symbionts for nutrition. The bacteria oxidize either hydrogen sulfide or methane which the host supplies to them. These worms were discovered in the late 1970s at the hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Islands and have since been found at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps in all of the world's oceans" (Wikipedia, Symbiosis)
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news.discovery.com/animals/bowerbirds-decorate-mate.html
The Aesthetic Ideas of Birds – The Bowerbird, Nature’s Great Seducer www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c
Inspired by Nature
Gurpreet Sabharwal 2010 CINE Presentation, Innovator: Shvam Antokoor
Shyam Antokoor, inspired by the lock-in Khajoor Tree, developed a fall-protection device that was patented in 1979. The device was later acquired by the Department of Atomic Energy and has been installed on all their projects. Mr. Antokoor, who launched a company called India Innovations Inc. designed further fall protection devices for the safety of workmen working at heights, which can be used for instance for work that involves pole climbing. He patented his product along with 8-10 versions of the design. Furthermore, he invented a para-gliding simulator, which might be installed in amusement parks and he is working on a device which does not require any manual assistance to clean windows of high rise buildings in metros.
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hint.fm/wind
a flock of white cranes against a black thundercloud - Colin Wilson
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Designs that can selfcorrect itself:
autopoesis designs
I Nature’s Architecture - 23rd Shodh Yatra - Dahod
“A Computer Constructed From a Consortium of Live Crabs” “If biomimicry is the instance of technology emulating natural processes, then this must be something like the opposite: researchers at Kobe University have built a computer out of crabs. Placed within a geometrically constrained environment, swarms of soldier crabs can be effectively used to emulate logic gates. In other words, researchers have replicated the fundamental workings of a computer--with crabs.
(…) When two swarms of crabs meet in motion, they tend to compromise by merging and continuing on in a direction that is the sum of the two swarms’ velocities, and this is where the computing comes in. The researchers built a system of channels in an environment that funnel the crabs along, like electrons flowing through a computer (they are prodded along by a fake bird shadow that is cast from overhead). Using a group of 40 real soldier crabs, the researchers tried to cajole the group into acting like a logic gate. They found they could build a very reliable OR logic gate--where one or two swarms are merged into a single path. Creating the AND gate--one that requires the crabs to all swarm down one of three paths--was more difficult, but the researchers think they can improve its rate of success by altering the environment to be more friendly to the crabs. PopSci
All that means that, technically, you could build a classical computer using the presence or absence of a swarm of crabs to represent 1s and 0s. Which doesn’t impact you at all, since it would be kind of silly to actually build a working computer that works in such a way. But isn’t it cool that you could?” (Clay Dillow, 2012, PopSci)
kyleoak.tumblr.com/post/22549439564
The Buddy System: Two Fish Swimming Side-by-Side Birgitt Boschitsch '13, Peter Dewey (GS), Alexander Smits (fac)
Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
In developing next-generation autonomous underwater vehicles we look for inspiration from the intelligent designs observed in nature.For this image, two artificial fish fins are placed side-by-side and flapped in-phase with each another as water flows past the fins (flow direction is up). Small hydrogen bubbles (the white part of the image) allow for the wake of the fins to be visualized. The interaction of the fins creates two repeating patterns of swirling vortices known as vortex streets.
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www.princeton.edu/artofscience/gallery2011/
Long term relationships require erecting non-negotiable fences which we can cross only with mutual consent and sometimes not at all. How do we decide which values are non-negotiable in an enterprise? Does it matter at all?
embracing rolu.terapad.com
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www.gwiin.com
Most recent award: Asa Magnuon from Sweden was voted overall winner in the European Union Women Inventors & Innovators Awards 2011 for her patented QSAVE PRO, an innovative life saving small, easy to swim with and bring under the surface device. It is suitable for assisting heavy victims from drowning while it can be brought from under the surface with relative ease than the other equipment that is used today, both on and under the surface.
“Women are rather invisible in the world of innovation. In the US, the country where most patents are filed: Only around 2% of the patents in the 200 past years have been granted to women. Almost 95% of the patents filed each year are still granted to men.
www.graphicart-news.com/amazing-vivid-and-buoyant-art-by-tamara-natalie-madden/
Why don’t we know famous women innovators? Do women invent less? Are they less creative? Is there a difference between men and women vis-àvis innovation? Does invention have a sex? “Feminising” science? To bring specific “feminine qualities” (intuition, expression of emotions, etc.) into science. BUT beware not to consider these qualities as genuine women’s attributes. They are socially constructed. It is not certain that more women in science will bring more of these “feminine values” –> female scientists often feel the necessity to abandon these qualities to feel more legitimate. Are women’s innovations invisible? Or women effectively innovate less? Autumn Stanley, author of Mothers and Daughters of Invention, states that women innovate as much as men. BUT maybe, they are not able to innovate as much as men because of the internalization of constraints and of their social role “
Elena Zahariev 2010 CINE Presentation
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www.graphicart-news.com/the-mouse-the-woman-surreal-collage-illustrations
Women and Innovation “While there is a growing body of information about women business owners and their enterprises, an increasing amount of focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, and excellent recent work in the area of how innovation has improved the lives of women in general, there remains a dearth of factual information on the intersection of all three: gender, entrepreneurship and innovation" (Womenable 2010) “(…) since women have a different managerial orientation than men, they should not try to integrate themselves into current institutions and create completely new, truly egalitarian and democratic institutions for themselves (feminist standpoint perspective). It is also observed that the approach of women to management is not suited with that of achieving pre-ordained instrumental goals and hence women can not be very successful in the present institutions. This is considered to be a radical and somewhat unpractical position since it claims that 'existing institutional arrangements are fundamentally flawed' and that 'women lack a real interest in adapting to them'. “ (Hoonar Janu, CINE Book Review 2009 of Alevsson & Due Billing - Understanding Gender and Organizations) “Loscocco et al (1991) identified that the concentration of the firms owned by women in the services and retail sector may explain a relative lack of success or performance of these firms as these sectors are highly competitive and with low growth" (Nageshwar V Neela, 2008 CINE Report ) “Meluhan women were free and had all rights. The prime minister of Meluha is a woman, as is the doctor who tends to Shiva and his people as they arrive in Srinagar from Tibet. Sati seems to embody the ideal Meluhan woman, bold, fearless and beautiful. Some women even make it as Kshatriyas through the Maika system. Again, this is something which came as very surprising to me and shows the importance of liberty of women in building a just and successful society in current times. And while we find it hard to still believe this, this followed as early as 1900 BC i.e. 4000 years ago. So, there is definitely a lesson we can draw from this. There is a lot of merit in this. From our past experiences, we have witnessed that the society which doesn’t provide proper recognition for women’s role has been laggard. By proper recognition, I don’t mean the highest position or something like that, but the respect that they deserve in whatsoever form. It is imperative for a society to respect everyone irrespective of their caste, creed, sex or religion. (…) We have seen certain instances in the current society as well where a woman with no child is treated unequally. Forget without child, in the current society, a woman with girl child only is also looked down upon which is really shameful. A woman being deprived of social status once her husband dies without any fault of hers can still be seen in some parts of Rajasthan. It has been depicted very well in the recent movie “Dor”" (Krishna Murari 2011 CINE Book Review of Amish Tripathi’s Immortals of Meluha )
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The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East
Gregoire Schwebig 2008 CINE Book Review of Kishore Mahbubani’s The New Asian Hemisphere
“Mahbubani strongly believes that all the current geopolitical tensions between the East and the West are derived from a big misunderstanding that as being an “Indian” Singaporean raised in the West, he should be able to solve. This misunderstanding is a result of both cultural differences and cultural ignorance. The West replicates its own beliefs and ways of doing things when it believes that the rise of the East in economic and political terms are meaning a domination of the West by the East, through a retaliation process. In other words, what the West has not understood according to the author is that the East is not willing to dominate the West but just to replicate its model and values. After making a cultural and sociological analysis of the Eastern minds, Mahbubani comes to the conclusion that there is a radical difference between the East and the West: where the West is convinced that the economic rise of the East means domination, the East only thinks about replication of a dreamt model i.e. the consumption society. As a result, the West still believes that a more balanced power system in the international organizations would meant less power and therefore more fragility and vulnerability"
“By a matter of fact, the West should prepare for a transfer of power towards the East. Unfortunately, the author reckons that neither the US nor Europe has shown the willingness and the courage to do so. Consequently the risk that the world is facing is that an imbalanced distribution of power in global institutions will weaken them, resulting in a possible creation of a parallel international system, established by the East with its own sets of rules. Making room for new players in international organizations require courageous national politicians as well as a deep rooted sentiment in the Western public opinions that the world has dramatically changed and that it is no longer possible to run it on old principles. Thus, Mahbubani urges Western intellectuals to explain to their people the need for a new global governance with balanced power. The world has new stakeholders and the West has to adapt for the better i.e. a world of peace, prosperity and stability. By arguing for a radical change of mindset in Western countries, the author highlights the relevance of Keynes’ quote at the very beginning of the book. Keynes’ message was: what is hard is not to embrace new ideas or to understand new concepts but to forget our former ways of thinking"
“Mahbubani estimates that the East is rising because it has been capable of absorbing the best of the West – political stability, focus on education, science and innovation, an independent justice etc. (…) Now that the west is relatively declining, it should have the humility and intelligence to do the same but in the reverse way. In other terms and to put it in an American corporate way, the West should make a benchmark of the best practises across the globe in terms of public governance and public policy. Consequently, the author believes that the West has several things to learn from the East: mainly pragmatism, patience and cooperation"
"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough" — Rabindranath Tagore
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Jacob Hashimoto, Overgrown with Osiers (2009) artruby.tumblr.com
Choice is ours, whether to be graveyard of ideas or a garden of weeds (ideas that grow even without permission). Is it necessary that we always work on ideas which most people vote for? Under what conditions should we believe in unpopular ideas?
introspecting K
www.kentrogowski.com/projects/everything-i-wish-i-could-be/
www.elliedavies.co.uk
if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there
- Lewis Carroll
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Mind & Heart
Aman Vig 2011 Book Review of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
“The main question for now is why I have chosen this book which is so high on emotional content. As a management student the normal choice would have been some businessman biography, entrepreneurship or others. But I still rate this book as the best book I have read so far, now you can argue that I have not read many books. But truly this book has changed the way or improved the way I see people around me. Before reading this, I have never contemplated much on the roles of mind and heart. Mind as we all know is very logical and practical and heart as we understand acts more on emotions and love. I believed that mind wins over heart in most of the cases or the cases which count. But this book challenges the believes I had. While reading this book you feel mind is nothing, it is the heart that drives the person. All major decisions in life if not been consulted with heart will later on lead to unimaginable consequences. (‌) Mind and heart are two separate entities we have to keep both happy by maintaining balance in our decisions, this is the most important lesson I learnt from this remarkable book"
streetanatomy.bigcartel.com/product/you-are-here-letter-press-poster
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Gaurav Singhal 2011 CINE Book Review of Richard Bach‘s Jonathan Livingston Seagull
“Seagulls as a species do not concern themselves with pursuits beyond their daily existence. But Jonathan wants to fly - and fly not just enough to catch the daily fish and muddle through a mundane life - but fly at a speed beyond the imagination of any seagull. He wishes to fly at a sinful speed. And learn how to stall in mid-air, how to swerve like a fireball and glide effortlessly through the morning sky" “Jonathan Livingston Seagull is one of the few books that touch the core philosophy of three very distinct religions. It talks about “karma” and rebirth drawing parallels with Hindu ideas regarding the same. Its emphasis on love and forgiveness are reminiscent of Christian virtues. The underlying theme of the book and the nature of its characters also draw attention to the importance of “focus” and “non judgemental understanding” which form a cornerstone of the Zen philosophy" “(…) when Jonathan is learning formation point rolls from Sullivan and keeps failing, we do not see any judgement being passed on Jon’s ability. Instead Sullivan continues saying “Let’s try it again” like a chant until Jonathan is able to master the art. This ritual of intense focus on the task at hand is almost like a prayer and it places a very high emphasis on action and on the ability of an individual to overcome all barriers. This is a very likeable idea because our society today places an exaggerated amount of importance on IQ and natural abilities. (…) Richard Bach places absolutely no limits on what an individual can achieve given the right directions and the right amount of hard work. This contrasts very sharply with the attitude of authors like Ayn Rand (or Nietzsche) who consider the majority of human race as “social ballast”. It is this departure from the existentialists that places Richard Bach on a more Christian path which, I personally feel, is a step up in the development of an individual’s paradigm" ‘The genius of Bach goes one step further when he outlines a clear and simple response to this attitude. He advocates love and forgiveness. Loving and forgiving those who damn your soul can only come from a highly developed sense of understanding and empathy. (…) The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it
is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change”. ‘
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The Quest for Meaning in Life
Atul Nivrutti Kawale 2011 Book Review of Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
“Dr. Frankl discovered that despite all the pain that people have to go through at the concentration camps, the ultimate salvation for humans is through love. (…) Dr. Frankl believed that everything can be taken away from a person but for his/her attitude under any given circumstance i.e. choosing one’s own way. The manner in which an individual could bear and handle the sufferings and pains is the actual inner achievement which makes life of that person meaningful and purposeful. The person who loses faith in himself and future is often doomed, plain and simple. This leads him to loss of his spiritual control over his life and further he becomes subject to physical and mental decay and his life falls apart" “Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence and man’s search for such meaning. This hunt to find the meaning in one’s life has been one of the primary motivational forces in a man" “According to the concept of Logotherapy, this meaning could be discovered in three ways: · By creating a work or doing a deed. · By experiencing something or encountering someone. · By the attitude we take towards unavoidable sufferings" “The widespread phenomenon of existential vacuum, as it is termed by the author, suggests that neither an inner instinct nor the traditions can tell a present day man what he or she wants to do. In the world nowadays, often people do not now what they want to do. Instead they simply follow what other people suggest them to be best for them or what others wish them to do"
“(…) if there is a meaning to life, there also must be a meaning in the sufferings which a person faces in his life. The way a person accepts and adapts with all the sufferings, gives them an opportunity to add more meaning to their life"
"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars"
— Rabindranath Tagore asoftskeleton.tumblr.com
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Fear & Innovation
Hoonar Janu & Saurabh Singhal 2009 CINE Project Report “Being the strongest of human emotions, the importance of fear’s role in shaping imagination cannot be overstated" “When people fail to understand a phenomenon with their existing knowledge or fail to resolve any kind of uncertainty, they try and use their imagination to explain their observations or to predict the future. (…) An exception is that sometimes people, especially the more creative ones, imagine things they have never seen, experienced or known" “Imagination, Creativity and Innovation are the three stages of what can be defined as an “Idea Chain”. The idea chain begins with mysterious components of psychology which form imagination and culminates in an innovation passing via the stage of creativity" “[Fear] pushes people out of their comfort zone and creates a sense of urgency. They no longer have the luxury of waiting till they can find a conventional solution and are forced to look for novel ideas. (…) Fear can also act as an inhibitor of creativity. However this is a different kind of fear than the one mentioned above. ”
“The fear that inhibits innovation is the most common of all fears and is widely experienced by all of us in our daily life. In most cases it is not as intense as the ones mentioned above. Most commonly, it is the fear of being different, fear of challenging the norms, fear of appearing foolish or immoral, fear of being rejected, abandoned or boycotted by others, fear of being alone, fear of being unsuccessful, fear of a financial loss, etc. Although not life threatening, these niggling fears or worries are responsible for holding back the journey of most of the creative ideas to the stage of innovation" (Janu & Singhal 2009))
Fear & Success “A very counter-intuitive but important fear which blocks innovation is the fear of success, a phenomenon first described by Martina Horner and later by Janet Shibley Hyde in her book "Half the Human Experience -- the Psychology of Women". This phenomenon is described as people not putting in their full potential or hesitating from doing new things because subconsciously they feel that they are not worth the success they might get and they wouldn’t know how to handle it. This feeling is born out of the human tendency of feeling comfortable in status-quo and avoiding any major changes in life’s routine and shying away form the limelight. Also, many people are afraid of the fact that as a side-effect of their success, their friends and other people close to them will become dissatisfied with themselves and would become more jealous and hostile. People also fear the fact that achieving success symbolizes the end of their endeavors in life and hence hesitate in utilizing their full potential. (Lazaris, 2002)" Dealing with stress “Some people believe that the relationship between fear and creativity is very symbiotic, especially in the field of arts. Fear is the first sign that you are being creative and if harnessed correctly can result in exciting and unconventional works (Daniel Saroka, 2006). “ “Psychological studies, through experiments under controlled situations, have found that both Eustress and Distress have the same physiological effect on the body and it is not possible for the body to differentiate between the two through only the effects. The difference is purely a psychological one and depends on how a person adapts to the situation causing the stress and how he looks upon the stress causing agent. If he accepts it as a validation of his creativity and uses it to push his thinking process, he will be able to enhance his performance. If he fears it and tries to avoid it, considering it a negative feeling, it inhibits his performance"
“(…) kids quickly accept and try to adapt to their fears , but by the time they become adults, they loose the ability to recognize and accept their fears due to social conditioning and hence their fear is usually manifested in emotions like anxiety, depression, chronic complaining etc. (Dr. Maurer). Instead, realizing that fear is an indication that you are being imaginative and are doing or learning something new and using that fear to energize you to go further will result in an expansion of the brain’s imagination domain"
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www.beililiu.com/06_07/encircle.html
“Fortitude is the capacity to say ‘no’ when the world wants to hear ’yes‘” - Erich Fromm (1968)
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The Pomegranate Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed saying, “Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons" Then another seed spoke and said, “When I was as young as you, I too held such views; but now that I can weigh and measure things, I see that my hopes were vain" And a third seed spoke also, “I see in us nothing that promises so great a future" And a fourth said, “But what a mockery our life would be, without a greater future!” Said a fifth, “Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are" But a sixth replied, “Whatever we are, that we shall continue to be" And a seventh said, “I have such a clear idea how everything will be, but I cannot put it into words" Then an eight spoke—and a ninth—and a tenth—and then many—until all were speaking, and I could distinguish nothing for the many our life voices. And so I moved that very day into the heart of a quince, where the seeds are few and almost silent. - Khalil Gibran
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Francesca Woodman
oahzyllib.tumblr.com/post/21690295647
“Woodman’s oeuvre represents a remarkably rich and singular exploration of the human body in space and of the genre of self-portraiture in particular. Her interest in female subjectivity, seriality, conceptualist practice, and photography’s relationship to both literature and performance are also hallmarks of the heady moment in American photography during which she came of age" -Guggenheim
Designing Suicide Proof Fans Additya Rathod 2010 CINE Project Report
“As I was watching the movie 3 Idiots, in which one of the student commits suicide hanging from a ceiling fan in his room, this problem struck to me. And as I kept thinking about it, it occurred to me that each one of us is just a couple of feet away from a potential suicide. Even a little bit of suicidal tendencies coming out of some frustration can lead to a death. I mean, it is so easy so take away one's life. I thought that this should not be so. World over so much effort goes into making man's life comfortable, happy, lengthening his life span, so much R&D that takes place in medical world. But, so little is talked about making it harder to commit suicides. That’s why I want to design a ceiling fan, which is Suicide-Proof i.e. you can not commit suicide using it" “I never intended and don’t intend to trivialize suicides. In fact, what happens is that after a suicide, the family and the society around is so shocked that they cannot look at the situation objectively. The issue of suicides is so sensitive that it looks like no one wants to think about it rationally and actually find some workable solution" “So my point is - the feeling of utmost anger, frustration, and helplessness can be caused by many things. We cannot eliminate all of these. It’s a part and parcel of life. What we can do is, create an environment which doesn’t punish so severely momentary insanity. The efforts should be towards creating suicide proof objects and atmosphere. So the efforts to reduce suicide rates should be more on means than on causes" “The concept of creating suicide proof objects (just like water proof or fool proof objects) should gain currency in the world. With 1 million people dying every year because of suicides, I think its high time innovators around the world start focusing on finding a remedy for it. When so much money gets spent in R&D for even disease which are not life threatening, the absence of any such investment on preventing suicides is sadly surprising. Thus, the field of medicine and especially household equipment manufacturers should start focusing on innovation in this respect"
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Adrian Ten’s commencement speech at halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone
untitled by Barrett Kowalsky http://encounterings.tumblr.com/post/22679143064
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"In the end you are left with a damning silence, wondering what is reality"
Muralidhar Jetti 2011 CINE Book Review of George Orwell’s 1984
"If we do not have Big Brother as such, there might be other, more subtle things to worry about" "In another parallel, I think that Orwell's idea of doublethink is not restricted by any means to the fictional society of Oceania. An example from the book deals with the Party's claim that the revolution happened to liberate the Proles: "But simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the Party taught that Proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules". I see doublethink in the way that European powers colonized the rest of the planet, and in the continuing economic domination of poorer countries. I see doublethink in certain attitudes towards women, where the double standard is alive and well" “Perhaps the strongest aspect of the last half of the novel is Orwell's blunt answer to the question of why. Winston has read a book describing how the Party stays in power, but he is plagued by the question of why. When he asks O'Brien this question, the answer is as blunt as could be imagined: power for the sake of power. And we are confronted, not with some abstract homily about absolute power, but the reality of complete and utter social power perpetuating itself, confident of its own immortality"
www.synapseproductions.org/whatson/images/1984web.jpg
Phantoms in the Brain
Someshwar Roy 2011 Book Review of Ramachandran & Blakeslee’s Phantoms in the Brain
“Since the way we experience the world around us is almost entirely wired in the brain, the chance of “reality” being actually the (collectively) common aspects of personal brain maps of humans becomes an option, even if probabilistically remote. Then, those aspects of our brain maps which we do not share with the masses give meaning to our individuality. In short, the eerie concept of the world, in reality, not being the way we experience it, becomes a possibility" rerylikes.tumblr.com
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“I'm alive, thought Veronika. Everything's going to start all over again. I'll have to stay in here for a while, until they realise that I’m perfectly normal. Then they'll let me out, and I'll see the streets of Ljubljana again, its main square, the bridges, the people going to and from work. Since people always tend to help others—just so that they can feel they are better than they really are—they'll give me my job back at the library. In time, I'll start frequenting the same bars and nightclubs, I'll talk to my friends about the injustices and problems of the world, I'll go to the cinema, take walks around the lake. Since I only took sleeping pills, I'm not disfigured in any way: I'm still young, pretty, intelligent, I won‘t have any difficulty in getting boyfriends, I never did. I'll make love with them in their houses, or in the woods, I'll feel a certain degree of pleasure, but the moment I reach orgasm, the feeling of emptiness will return. We won't have much to talk about, and both he and I will know it. The time will come to make our excuses—‘It's late’, or ‘I have to get up early tomorrow’—and we'll part as quickly as possible, avoiding looking each other in the eye. I'll go back to my rented room in the convent. I'll try and read a book, turn on the TV to see the same old programs, set the alarm clock to wake up at exactly the same time I woke up the day before and mechanically repeat my tasks at the library. I'll eat a sandwich in the park opposite the theatre, sitting on the same bench, along with other people who also choose the same benches on which to sit and have their lunch, people who all have the same vacant look, but pretend to be pondering extremely important matters. Then I'll go back to work, I'll listen to the gossip about who's going out with whom, who's suffering from what, how such and such a person was in tears about her husband, and I'll be left with the feeling that I'm privileged: I'm pretty, I have a job, I can have any boyfriend I choose. So I’ll go back to the bars at the end of the day, and the whole thing will start again. My mother, who must be out of her mind with worry over my suicide attempt, will recover from the shock and will keep asking me what I'm going to do with my life, why I'm not the same as everyone else, things really aren't as complicated as I think they are. ‘Look at me, for example, I've been married to your father for years, and I've tried to give you the best possible upbringing and set you the best possible example.’ One day, I'll get tired of hearing her constantly repeating the same things, and to please her I'll marry a man whom I oblige myself to love. He and I will end up finding a way of dreaming of a future together: a house in the country, children, our children's future. We'll make love often in the first year, less in the second, and after the third year, people perhaps think about sex only once a fortnight and transform that thought into action only once a month. Even worse, we'll barely talk. I'll force myself to accept the situation, and I'll wonder what's wrong with me, because he no longer takes any interest in me, ignores me, and does nothing but talk about his friends, as if they were his real world. When the marriage is just about to fall apart, I'll get pregnant. We'll have a child, feel closer to each other for a while, and then the situation will go back to what it was before. I'll begin to put on weight like the aunt that nurse was talking about yesterday—or was it days ago, I don't really know. And I'll start to go on diets, systematically defeated each day, each week, by the weight that keeps creeping up regardless of the controls I put on it. At that point, I'll take those magic pills that stop you feeling depressed, then I'll have a few more children, conceived during nights of love that pass all too quickly. I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living. People will always consider us a happy couple, and no one will know how much solitude, bitterness and resignation lies beneath the surface happiness" (Paulo Coelho – Veronika Decides to Die)
What’s There To Live For?
Abhisek Kishor 2011 CINE Book Review of Paulo Coelho‘s Veronika Decides to Die
“Hence what’s there to live for? Why to keep on living a mediocre life, just because you are supposed to do so? Who says it is wrong to commit suicide? If I am an adult then it’s my life and it is my right to do whatever I want to do with my life. What right has anyone got to govern and decide what I should do in my life? Why should I keep on living for making people happy when every day the discontent in my life will increase even more and someday down the line I will be hurting the same people for whom I didn’t “go”? Why can’t I take a decision which will make me happy? If I feel suffocated in this life then why don’t I have a right to end this suffering?” “What do you think about all this? Rubbish? You are free to think this way. It seems like it says youthfulness is bad, looking beautiful, intelligent is all bad. But not only this, it also denies the great institution called ‘Marriage’ and the most important institution, in our minds but not on our lips, called ‘Sex’. Well, I suppose this is truth for only some of us but disturbingly among these few, very few want to admit this. In fact, most of us think that marriage, as well as all the other “society” institutions (except ‘Sex’) are really very true. Unfortunately this is so because they are people afraid of change, people who cannot even look beyond these systems and this society, who cannot look within themselves, and act the way they want. Loose themselves up and move on, move on to some other world if they want to is not allowed for them. Why is there so much pressure? Why this pressure is constantly increasing? While developing as an economy, we are forgetting that we are selling ourselves, even more every day, to the unknown and putting our souls into a big box to be thrown into the deep waters of our hearts" “Well finally, I don’t agree with the way Veronika behaved initially, the whole suicide thing. I think finally she found love, not only love as a person, but love towards life and discovered that each and every person in this world is not alone. There are so many people whose lives are affected by a single life. So many experiences are there to be had in this life, so many feelings are there inexperienced, so many changes can be made, so many people can be made happy and their lives touched by only one person. I think, she would surely be an inspiration for many others in her lifetime who will start having a meaningful life!”
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Good Will Hunting
M.S. Karthik CINE 2010 Review of the movie “Good Will Hunting”
“Will Hunting is a janitor in MIT. He secretly works out the problems which the advanced mathematics professor puts up on the board outside the classroom. He had a gift of solving problems. He could learn any academic text, whether economics or mathematics in almost no time, by using library books without anyone's guidance and solve any related problem"
20poorandfabulous.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/good-will-hunting.jpg
filmadventhrough.blogspot.in/2011/10/good-will-hunting-van-sant-1997.html
“(…) This part of the movie made me think about what I have been going through during my time as an engineer and now as an MBA. I know I am good at what I am supposed to be good at as an engineer and MBA, but it really is not what I really want to do. Like Will in the film, having certain abilities often leads to a conventional choice of career, while one's heart may be in another field altogether. I am now wondering if what I am doing now with my career is right or not"
“One only understands the things that one tames� The little prince said "I am looking for friends. What does that mean, 'tame'?" "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties" "'To establish ties'?" "Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.." "I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me.." ----The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please, tame me!" he said. "I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand" "One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery – The Little Prince, from 2011 CINE Book Review by Sharath Chandra Devasani)
tsbanksyprick.tumblr.com/
K
The Friction of YES and NO
Jonathan Safran Foer (2005) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn’t made my life wonderful, its made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify “book” by peeling open my hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it" minuhemmati.blogspot.in/2010/12/leise-quietly.html
The Outsider
Vimal S. Nair 2011 CINE Book Review of Colin Wilson’s The Outsider
“What would happen if everyone became an outsider? Does this mean no one will understand the purpose of life? Would it not lead to end of progress and innovation and ultimately the end of the world?” Outsiders are born so, or do people tend to change from Insiders to Outsiders? In this regard, the author specifies that insiders chase the world without a purpose. In my opinion, he means an unending paradox, when a person is trying to follow the text on a page as follows:
The text on the other side of the paper is true.
The text on the other side of the paper is false.
“Do Outsiders ever experience freedom? The hypothesis suggesting the alternative is that, freedom comes from a will to do something which is an effect of a motive in life. Motive comes from belief in any aspect which is a consequence of trust in reality. An outsider who finds it difficult to trust reality will not be able to enjoy freedom" “(…) a romantic outsider divides himself into two persons: a civilized man and a wolf man. The civilized man loves all things of the world i.e. cleanliness, order, poetry and music. His other half is a savage who loves the second world, the world of darkness. For him, bourgeois civilization and all its inanities are a great joke. This immediately brings to our mind Dr. Jekyll and Hyde who let the savage Dr. Jekyll take over the normal Hyde. If having two personalities is the criterion to become a romantic outsider, everyone is a romantic outsider. But letting the normal person take over the savage one is a character which not everyone would possess. Finding the perfect co existence of both characters brings a man akin to god"
“Another reason why we can find a romantic outsider more plausible is as follows: The previous description of Outsider challenges truth and tries to find the ultimate truth. The romantic outsider does not contend the presence of truth but tries to find out where he can find the ultimatum. This essentially should mean that a person, who is consciously and continuously awake to questions, has in him all qualities to be classified as a romantic outsider"
K
“Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy"
Kantesh D Patil 2011 CINE Book Review of George Orwell’s Animal Farm
In order to preserve and consolidate his power Napoleon practices military force over the other animals. Through this daunting approach Napoleon is able to control and manipulate the rest of the animals to follow his tyrannical lead. Day by day Napoleon’s power grows stronger and trough his manipulating and supervisory fashion he makes sure that nobody comes in his way, and if anyone actually does so he takes on all necessary means to remove them. When he faces competition, as he does from Snowball, he influences the other animals to believe that Snowball is the cause of their problems, and consequently Snowball becomes ostracized from the group. Furthermore, since the intention of the revolution was to create a free and liberal animal farm where everyone is equal most of the animals are almost blind to Napoleon’s rise to power. Naively most of the animals do not understand what Napoleon is trying to do before it is too late; they trust him to do what is best for all of the animals since this was the intention of the revolution. Without opposition Napoleon’s power is allowed to grow even stronger, and he does not let anything come in his way in his constant power-struggle.
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It is well known that The Animal Farm is a allegory of Soviet Russia and that the concept of Animalism rises from the socialist tradition originating from Karl Marx’s ideas. However, Stalin (who is portrayed by Napoleon in this novel) countered this communistic society by the ways of capitalism, the very counterpart of socialist society (…). In the Battle of Cowshed the animals overthrow the rulers, just like the Russian government ruled by czars was overthrown and the subsequent leaders established a corrupt government driven by greed and corruption of power. Just like Stalin, Napoleon continues his hunt for power, and what ones was seen as an idyllic place for the animals to live and prosper slowly turned in to a place filled with suppression and anguish. The mental and physical agony continues for the animals as Napoleon deprives them of one of their most basic needs, the milk, and just like Stalin, Napoleon in this way transfer power from the group to the rulers – and no longer does the power belong to the people (the animals) but to an authoritarian regime.
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K
Why do we feel so possessive about our ideas and feel shy in sharing them with others?
How do I know whether my ideas are valuable, unless some others try to steal them? Do potential clients or customers always know best what is needed by them? Under what conditions do we put faith in ‘supply creating demand’? What distinguishes those who have hundreds of ideas but never do any thing to implement them vis-à-vis those who test the validity of their ideas by experimenting them, no matter how tiresome? Choice is ours, whether to be graveyard of ideas or a garden of weeds (ideas that grow even without permission)? Is it necessary that we always work on ideas which most people vote for? Under what conditions should we believe in unpopular ideas? How many innovations do we know which grew into products and services without creation of a knowledge network? Are not people with high social connectivity often poor in ideation and innovation? How much isolation is necessary to nurture fresh ideas? Is the issue how much of social connectivity or what kind of social connectivity, which makes a difference to the quality of knowledge network? Are we not part of several knowledge networks?
Not all the social capital embedded in knowledge networks is harnessed by an entrepreneur, but without harnessing such capital, can any enterprise ever survive?
Some of the most precious moments of our life are those in which we undertake non reciprocal acts (that is in which no body can pay us back, for whatever good we may do for others) and yet a large part of our life is spent in most calculative acts. Is it surprising that many of us always find true happiness so elusive? How do start-ups embed larger social purpose in the DNA of the enterprise? Open innovation models are being used widely even by large companies but start-ups feel inhibited in exploring such a platform in which reciprocities are well defined and sourcing of ideas from strangers is encouraged. What is the fear in learning from strangers? Many start-up ventures don’t grow because the entrepreneur does not have a clear business model in mind. The line between personal and firm’s accounts are not clearly drawn. Team building is a very critical component of setting up an enterprise. How do we choose partners and how much openness do we maintain in the team, how do we handle break-ups?
Long term relationships require erecting non-negotiable fences which we can cross only with mutual consent and sometimes not at all. How do we decide which values are non-negotiable in an enterprise? Does it matter at all?
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“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it"
- ‘Siddhartha’ by Hesse