21C Learning Innovation

"Open competitions can help find an optimal solution to a well-understood problem, but they are a poor way to innovate.

... Executives shouldn’t begin by thinking that all the smart people work for someone else. Instead, they should begin by asking: what is the paradigm that is leading my company? Risk-averse companies don’t lead—and they do not lead because they do not understand the paradigm that is driving the demand for their products—or for someone else’s products. Steve Jobs understood very well the paradigm of the digital revolution. Risk-averse Kodak had very smart people who invented the first digital camera—and did nothing with it because they didn’t “get” a paradigm that made their photographic film irrelevant.

... The Model T and iPhone weren’t the outcomes of contests, and genuinely world-changing innovations won’t come from competitions run by risk-averse firms. Instead, executives should seek out those discourses that are like hurricanes, whose eyes are paradigms, which will either propel or destroy them. They will do far better by embracing the discourse of the 1 percent that “get” the paradigms of empowerment, and with them, risk creating the future, than betting their futures on entries to solve problems that may not matter from a crowd of contestants they don’t even know."

Randall S. Wright is senior liaison officer with MIT’s Office of Corporate Relations.

"Learning through doing has overtaken a classroom-style approach as the top way to learn, according to a Skillsoft survey of learning styles of 1000 UK office workers. Figures released to coincide with this year’s Adult Learners’ Week (18-24 May) and Learning at Work Day (23 May) found that nearly one third (33%) of respondents prefer to learn by feeling or experiencing, followed by just under one fifth (19%) of those favouring a classroom-based approach and just over 17% of respondents admitting to being visual learners.

The research also found significant variations between learning styles of the youngest and oldest age groups. 26% of 16-24 year olds favour a visual approach - looking at graphics, watching a demonstration or reading - compared to just 6% of over 55s. However, the over 55s are more responsive to learning in a group setting with their peers and having the opportunity to discuss and learn from others experiences. 20% in this age group prefer this style, compared to only 5% of 16-24 year olds.

... When it comes to industry comparisons, the legal and HR sectors have a strong bias towards classroom learning, with 31% and 25% respectively, preferring this style. This approach was least favoured by the architecture, engineering and building sector (12%) who instead overwhelmingly preferred to learn through doing (40%). The top method in the arts and culture sector was to learn individually with the ability for people to go at their own pace, in their own time. 30% of respondents preferred to learn in this way compared to the overall base figure of just 12%."

Image:

https://hcp.accu-chek.co.uk/gbconnect/learning-styles.html

"Morning Star, the world's largest tomato processor, is flatter than a pancake leveled by a steamroller. There are no managers. No directives from above. No promotions. No titles.

Instead, there is the philosophy promulgated by Morning Star's founder (don't dare call him CEO), Chris Rufer. More than 40 years ago, Rufer launched a trucking company to haul tomatoes to canneries. The work did not lend itself to the management theories he had learned as an M.B.A. student at UCLA. "How do you manage truck drivers, anyway?" Rufer muses. "Put a supervisor in every truck? It was just, I do my thing; everyone else do your thing. That seemed to work."

... The ballast to autonomy is accountability, which can take many forms. Perhaps most important, employees want to perform because reputation is the coin of the realm. In a company with no promotions, people earn more by getting better at their jobs. Employee-elected compensation committees set pay levels after measuring colleagues' performance against their CLOUs and other metrics. Morning Star can pay 15 percent more in salaries and 35 percent more in benefits than the industry average because it's not paying managers and productivity is so high."

Nearly half of working Canadians say that work is the most stressful part of their lives, and many find work is a source of depression and anxiety, a new study says.

The online survey of more than 1,000 working Canadians was conducted last month by Ipsos Reid on behalf of Ottawa-based Partners for Mental Health, a not-for-profit organization which aims to improve how Canadians deal with mental health issues.

"* On a metaphysical level, wabi-sabi is a beauty at the edge of nothingness. That is, a beauty that occurs as things devolve into, or evolve out of, nothingness. Consequently, things wabi-sabi are subtle and nuanced.

* The beauty of wabi-sabi is an "event," a turn of mind, not an intrinsic property of things. In other words, the beauty of wabi-sabi "happens," it does not reside in objects and/or environments. By analogy, if you fall in love with someone or something—say a physically unattractive person, place, or thing—thereafter you will perceive this someone or something as beautiful (at least some of the time), even if the rest of the world doesn't.

* Wabi-sabi has a compelling pedagogic dimension. Because things wabi-sabi reveal "honest" natural processes such as aging, blemishing, deterioration, etc., they graphically mirror our own mortal journeys through existence. Accordingly, interacting with wabi-sabi objects and environments surely inclines us towards a more graceful acceptance of our existential fate.

* Wabi-sabi is, at root, an aestheticization of poverty—albeit an elegantly rendered poverty. As such, wabi-sabi is a democratic beauty available equally to rich and poor alike.

* Wabi-sabi is the antithesis of the Classical Western idea of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and/or monumental. In other words, wabi-sabi is the exact opposite of what slick, seamless, massively marketed objects, like the latest handheld wireless digital devices, aesthetically represent."

"It could make us more willing to express how we feel. Or you could say it over-simplifes our complex moods and lives. But today the Facebook status update box began offering the option to “share how you’re feeling or what you’re doing” through a drop-down menu of emoticons and media. We’re entering a more structured era of communication, where both friends and big data know exactly how we tick.

... Then there’s the fuzzy side. Emotions. Sharing how we feel. To some it comes easy, with exclamation points, colorful language, or typed-in emoticons. For them, mood sharing could let them do it fast, and with a bonus little graphic that could draw people’s eyes. But to others, saying how they feel is tough. You might fear you can’t boil down emotions like anguish or dumbfounded excitement. That you’ll lose something in translation. And you might be right.

... But the option to select and share a pre-constructed emotion could make some people more open than they usually are. And that’s whole point of Facebook."

"The political world may have been focused last week on crises at the Senate and the Toronto mayor’s office, but anew report from the government’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council quietly pointed to a serious, emerging economic crisis.

The STIC reported that Canada’s research and development performance is lagging behind the world’s leading economies, continuing a disturbing decade-long decline.

The STIC report is the third produced since 2008, but the first to sound an unmistakable alarm on worrying trends that could have dire long-term consequences for the Canadian economy. Simply put, based on the latest data Canada cannot be regarded as a serious player when it comes to innovation."

If you’re looking for low-cost labor on the Internet, you would be wise to frame the assignment as something significant. That’s the conclusion of newly published research, which takes the truism that man craves meaning—postulated by psychologist Viktor Frankl in the 1940s, and preached by behavioral economist Dan Ariely today—and applies it to the contemporary practice of online piecemeal work.

The more a monotonous Internet project is perceived as meaningful, “the more likely a subject is to participate, the more output they produce, the higher-quality output they produce, and the less compensation they require for their time,” write Dana Chandlerof the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Adam Kapelner of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. What’s more, they add in the Journal ofEconomic Behavior and Organization, this truism apparently applies across cultures, equally impacting workers in India and the United States.

A new study from Wikia and Ipsos MediaCT, “GenZ: The Limitless Generation,” surveyed 1,200 Wikia users between the ages of 13 and 18. What they found was a very connected generation, which bodes well for such critical corporate skills as collaboration, curiosity, critical thinking and problem-solving.

“Everyone can learn from the ways in which this unbounded younger generation interacts with technology and is able to quickly adapt to the rapidly changing media landscape,” stated Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikia.

Some of the data from the survey:

60% of Gen Zers say they like to share their knowledge with others online, a sign of collaborative skills.

64% say they contribute to Websites because they like learning about new things.

76% feel that their online experiences will help them reach their goals.

66% say that technology makes them feel that anything is possible

Research by Hay Group, culled from its 17,000-person behavioral competency database in 2012,finds that when it comes to empathy, influence, and the ability to manage conflicts in the executive level, women show more skill than men. Specifically, women are more likely to show empathy as a strength, demonstrate strong ability in conflict management, show skills in influence, and have a sense of self-awareness.

"American folk musician Richie Havens, who was the first performer at the Woodstock music festival, has died. His family said Havens died of a heart attack in New Jersey Monday. He was 72."