Off Course-On Target

Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery and Design?

Perhaps it is just a case of seeing what I want to, but I seem to be finding more and more evidence to support my long-term prediction that for the next few decades at least, we will find that one of the greatest sources of innovation, new ideas, and inspiration will be the developing regions of the world. This is due to:

• The benefit of starting with a a clean slate and having no pre-existing infrastructures, customs, and behaviors to overcome.
• The driving force of necessity, which, as the saying goes, is "the mother of invention".
• The fact that creativity and innovative thinking lies within all 6.6 billion of us on the planet! 

Whatever the reasons though, I think we all have a great deal to learn and benefit from these often overlooked and unexpected sources.

Amazing Afrigadget (www.afrigadget.com)

The most recent example of one such fabulous source of innovation and invention is called Afrigadget. Thanks to Kelly Rupp, my champion at Autodesk, and Jeff Wilk at TenCue for the link.

I highly recommend you check out some of the fascinating postings on the AfriGadget site.  Some recent ones that I think you might find particularly worthwhile and interesting include:

• An interview with Simon Mwacharo, an entrepreneur whose small business CraftSkills, is based in Nairobi, Kenya. His business focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places that do not have access to the electric grid.
• "Powering African Schools with Toys", which is the story of a young inventor, 23-year-old Daniel Sheridan, and his vision of how children playing on a school yard teeter-totter (seesaw) could supply significant amounts of electrical energy for the area.
• A fascinating online overview with lots of great links to mobile phone solutions from another great resource, Jan Chipchase, who works for Nokia. As AfriGadget says, Jan “can best be described as a design and usability ethnographer. He explores the way mobile phones are used worldwide, and reports back to Nokia’s design team. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, and I thought I might highlight some of the stories he’s come up with while exploring in Africa.”
• The Village Phone project (by Grameen Bank) happening in Uganda. Jan has taken an excellent picture and annotated it with the important facts about this project in a rural Uganda.

  

  For more information about Jan, read this recent NY Times article, and of course, you can subscribe to his blog, Future Perfect.

Well, you get the idea, this site is just full of inspiring stories of powerful, yet often very simple, solutions coming out of Africa. I highly recommend the AfriGadget site as a worthwhile place to spend some time during your next web surfing session.

Benefiting without Eliminating?

As I noted at the start of this posting, one of the key reasons why developing regions are such a rich source of ideas and innovation is that they lack the prior use, habits, and infrastructure that are present in the more developed parts of the world. As you check out the postings on AfriGadget , consider one of the ongoing questions I ponder about all this:

How we can find a way to reap the benefits of these new discoveries, inventions, and innovations, have them spread to everyone and everywhere who could benefit, and yet not interfere or negatively change or inhibit these sources? 

The value is partly that people in these regions have not been affected by our thinking, models, assumptions, etc., and so what concerns me is how do we tap into these sources without affecting and changing them?

100 Days and it’s gone?

Perhaps we can't avoid affecting and changing them. Maybe we just want to be sure to maximize the benefits and innovation coming from these sources. This situation might benefit from a tactic I’ve long practiced with new employees, staff, or team members who join an organization that I am part of. I make it a point to meet with these new arrivals, not only to welcome them, but to tell them that for the next 100 days, they have a unique and special value to offer. Because they are new and not indoctrinated, they will see things differently than those who have been with the organization for some time. They will have different assumptions, and they will suggest different solutions to problems. My choice of 100 days is relatively random, but in the several decades I’ve been doing this, it seems to be the amount of time it takes before their newness is lost, and with it this unique and transitory value.

Of course, I am also quick to point out that this is hardly the end of their value (let’s hope!), but rather that this is the moment in time when they have a unique value to offer.  My specific recommendations are to have them ask those '”dumb questions” quite loudly and proudly, since they often serve as the spark of new thinking that leads to a better solution. I recommend that those who are around these new arrivals tap into this special value and ask the newcomers for their opinions, their perspectives, and ideas.

More commonly, new people tend to be quiet, study the situation, and assume that they won’t have as much to offer until they get “up to speed” with the norms of the organization and thinking of others, but that approach misses out on a great opportunity.

Learning from the OLPC example?

A more direct example, that I’m still pondering, is the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and similar efforts like:

• The Classmate PC, a low-cost laptop by Intel
• Digital Textbook, a South Korean project that intends to distribute tablet notebooks to elementary school students, and put computers in the hands of the masses in many developing regions. 

More specifically, I wonder whether OLPC's decision to offer only the new equipment, but no teacher training, set curriculum, guidelines, and “how to” type of information, was a “bug” or a feature?  In part, this was apparently a budget issue—no funds for such materials and programs—but as you might guess, I actually think that purposefully NOT providing this type of training and guidance will produce much more innovative uses and outcomes than if all the “experts” had provided their guidance, opinions, directions, and methods.

Les extremes se touche?

However, I believe there are ways to bridge these two extremes of providing no assistance and providing too much.  There are LOTS of parallels here to what makes for great teaching and great learning, and I’ll explore some of these themes later. But for now, sparked by the brilliant light shining out of these often overlooked sources of creativity, I want to focus our collective attention on them to see what we can learn from them, and how we might all benefit more.

I am not suggesting that these developing regions are the only sources of inspiration, innovation, and ideas, nor am I suggesting that as they become more successful, they will lose this wellspring of inspiration. Certainly human history shows otherwise.  No, I’m pondering this idea with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation and invention. I'd like to see us work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match this world of exponential change and its accompanying challenges that we are now living in.

I think about these questions ALOT, and so I’d like to develop them a bit further in a future post.  For now, I leave you to enjoy and benefit (I hope) from checking out Afrigadget and stimulating you to both look for more and send along some of your favorite sources of innovation, creativity, and invention, wherever they may be.

And as always I’m VERY interested in your perspectives and views. Does this match examples that you are seeing?  What are some of the best sources for innovation, invention, and ideas that you are aware of?  Think about your last "Aha!" moment, streak of creativity, or invention.  What were the conditions and the environment as this was happening?  See any common elements in these?  Or do you see any common elements that we want to avoid—those that stifle or reduce creativity?  I'm anxious to hear your comments, and I’ll be back shortly with more of my thoughts on increasing the volume and diversity of creativity in the world.

Cool Tools I Use: Computer Utilities

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  I'd like to hear about yours.  Meanwhile, here's are two simple, but ever so handy, computer utilities that I use regularly and wanted to pass on to you.

FinePrint

FinePrint is a fabulous printing utility that lets you:

• Preview the pages prior to printing.
• Create multi-page mini booklets.
• Save print jobs for reuse or modifications in the future.

A side (but significant) benefit is that it helps to reduce the amount of paper I use.

Previewing

I have FinePrint set as my default printer so I always get to see a preview of just how the page is going to look BEFORE it comes out of the printer.  Maybe you are different, but I frequently find something amiss with the layout—something I’ve left out, or how an image will be displayed—when I’m quickly previewing the image before I hit the print button. With this FinePrint preview feature, I’m able to go back in and make my adjustments and I now almost always get it right with the first printout... and I have a LOT less paper in the waste basket.

Creating handy booklets

But of all its many features, the one I use the most is its “booklet'” function.  This too helps me save a lot of paper and is especially easy to use if you have duplex printing available, but it works without as well. Using this feature, I can print out multi-page documents as very handy little booklets that are a set of sheets of regular-sized paper folded in half for reading as a small book.  FinePrint does all the slicing and dicing of the text and images of my original content. It figures out what to print on each side of each page so that when you take the stack out of the printer, all you do is fold it in half and start reading. Each page is in the proper order on both sides of the paper.

They make incredibly handy reading of longer documents, manuals, or guide books, and this format is great for reading in flight or in transit—no batteries required!  Whenever I print these up and give them to others, they are amazed and delighted, and I’ve received a lot of great comments and thanks afterwards from the recipients.

Other features

FinePrint optionally puts in a header or footer that is oriented correctly, and I find that having it automatically insert things like date, page number, file name, and full path, which I find particularly useful when I’m looking at a printout months later. FinePrint also offers the ability to do watermarks on the documents.

FinePrint also makes a companion utility that I use almost as frequently called PDF Factory, which is extremely handy for PDF file creation without requiring a full Adobe Acrobat installation.  It's very flexible and does the job at least 90% of the time...at least for me.

My description doesn't really do this utility justice, and I'll try to write up more about it soon. It is one of those "little tools" that I use almost every day, and I miss it when it is not installed on a computer that I'm using.

KeyText

KeyText is an old utility (like me perhaps) that creates simple macros. I’m sure that many of you will send in some much better and more modern utilities that let you create simple macros, but this is one of the tools I use the most and have had the longest. 

At its heart, it is a simple macro creation tool, but what I use it for the most is the creation of a whole set of keyboard shortcuts for my most common text entries—everything from phone numbers, credit card numbers, common messages, and literally any other text I regularly need to type out or enter into forms.

To use it, you simply create the text you want to have inserted, assign a shortcut key combination, such as Ctl + Alt + S (for signature for example), and now you can insert this text anytime, anywhere with one keystroke. 

KeyText does so much more, so please take a few minutes to read over its description on the Keytext website. Although I use only a small subset of its features, I just know that every time I work on any other computer, I feel lost and am reminded how much I use this tool every day. 

***********

Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

Living and Learning at the Beginning of the Cognitive Age?

The New York Times recently published an article by op-ed columnist David Brooks"The Cognitive Age" that I think is very worthwhile reading. While I have no interest in the political aspect of this piece, I do have a great deal of interest in his main point about the economic connections to skills, and about the future being one of "cognitive talent", as well as Brooks' keen observations about the connections to learning.

I've often observed that for the past few thousand years, we as humans have focused on leveraging and augmenting our physical abilities—initially with basic tools such as the lever, the wheel, pulleys, screws, etc. and then on through machines, internal combustion engines, hydraulics, electricity and robots. All of these enable us to do things we either could physically not do ourselves or give us the ability to do them faster, easier, and at greater scale. While this will likely continue for some time, my sense is that we are at the point of diminishing returns (have been for some time), and that the future (and some aspects of the present) is about putting more and more focus on leveraging and augmenting our cognitive capabilities. The most obvious example is computer technology that enables us to do things with our brains that we either could not do or now can do much faster, easier, and at greater scale. 

Of course, much has been written about the "knowledge worker", but the most common picture painted seems to be based around an office or desk job model. I think the vast majority of jobs will be elsewhere: on site, in the field, mobile, and other environments. What's more, many jobs—the majority I believe—have been categorized as skilled labor, blue collar work, and other such labels.  It's thought that these jobs will either be eliminated or relegated to low skills and low wages.

As mentioned in my previous post "Human History is Additive Not Subtractive",  these prognostications of the experts seems very much at odds with what has actually been happening. Consider everyday needs of most people for services, such as car repairs, plumbing, health care, and manufacturing. In all of these cases, we find perhaps the most amount of change. They are becoming more and more cognitive-based, rather than manual-labor-based.  While you still get your hands dirty doing many of these, it is the brain of those doing these jobs which is doing more and more of the work. Brooks points out this same kind of disparity with globalization:

"But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S."

The article goes on to make the key point for me:

"The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked."

I think it is also worth noting how well this matches up with and augments the astute observations that Daniel Pinks makes about the characteristics of the coming "Right Brain Economy" in his book Whole New Mind.  You can read more about this and how it ties into this same theme in my previous posting "Getting it Right".

In his blog "Connecting the Dots", Steve Borsch had a recent posting called "The Cognitive Age: Why Social Media Matters", which references Brooks' New York Times article and adds some interesting observations. He sees social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well as trends I've commented on previously, such as crowdsourcing (originally coined by Jeff Howe in this worthwhile article in 2006 Wired magazine), are tied into the emerging cognitive age Brooks outlines so well.

For me however, Brooks synthesizes this all down to make the most compelling point about the often misguided views of globalization with his note:

"The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called 'the Chinese' or 'the Indians,' are doing this or that.

But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy—the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. (emphasis added)

If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner."

This certainly matches up with my experiences of traveling the world and working with so many people of diverse cultures, countries, industries, and jobs. Going back to my opening comments, you can see why I was drawn to Brooks' observations that we are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, and that indeed the future is all about leveraging and augmenting our cognitive abilities. 

As Brooks notes, this all aligns very well with the need for an increased focus on learning. In some future articles, I am going to look at the flip side of the learning coin: teaching as a skill set that we will all want and need be more competent with if we are to survive and thrive in a cognitive age. 

And what do YOU think?  Does this match up with what you are seeing within your own job and practice as well as within your community, your children and your experiences with the world at large? Send in your comments, critiques, counter views or additional examples of these trends.

Cool Tools I Use: SPOT on!

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  I'd like to hear about yours.  Meanwhile, here's another one of mine:

This SPOT messenger system is one of my newer "can't live without" tools and a "mashup" of hardware and software technologies, namely GPS, satellite-based communications, realtime mapping, and more.  It is also an example of the kind of "advanced" functionality that is quickly moving out of the hands of experts and high budget projects or pure luxury objects into the consumer mainstream. This is a trend we are seeing much more of these days, and is one I see escalating exponentially in the years ahead.

Look, look! See SPOT run!

SPOT is a great example of the power of simple purpose combined with simple design.  It essentially does ONE thing very well: tells anyone you choose to know precisely where it (and you!) is on the planet with the push of a single button. It uses GPS to precisely calculate where it is when you push the "check" button, and transmits the latitude and longitude coordinates via the worldwide (almost) GlobalStar to a list of people (text message or e-mail) that you give it and to a website-based map. 

It costs less than US$150 along with an annual subscription of about $90. For people like myself who are regularly in very remote and varied locations, and involved in possibly life-threatening or risky situations, this is a no-brainer purchase.

Simply Great!

Simplicity is one of the things that makes this such a marvel for me and why it's made my list of Cool Tools to share with you. Designing for simplicity is in fact very difficult, and it seems a bit of a lost art these days, although it one I believe and hope is making a comeback.

The SPOT device itself is relatively small (about the size of slightly rotund older cell phone), and while I sometimes wish it were smaller, I must admit that I lose smaller things much more easily, and this device is not cumbersome. But if you were wearing it on your belt or carrying in your purse, it would be nice if it were smaller. I suspect that the size is mostly due to the lithium battery (replaceable), which is probably more suitable for safety in high risk safety situations.  It need to be very dependable and must last for a long time (years vs. days or weeks). Getting a "sorry low battery" warning is NOT something you want to see if you are using this.

Continuing with the simplicity theme... there are no wires, no plug-ins, no attachments, no protrusions (such as antenna), and it has a VERY simple interface consisting of only four buttons: on/off, OK (CheckIn), 911, and HELP, with a red/green indicator light for each one. 

How Do I Use It?

If you think you or others you know and love might have a good use for this device, you can read more on the SPOT website,  but here is the quick overview to help you see just why I think this is such a Cool Tool for me and perhaps for you.

SPOT has two primary functions that I use on a regular basis

√ Check in:  When I push the "Check In" button on SPOT it sends a short message with my exact latitude and longitude information via satellite to a list of people I have provided. Being satellite-based means this will go out independent of any phone or radio systems anywhere on the planet.*  It can take up to about 2 minutes for the message to go out via satellite, BUT it will go out as long as it has a clear view of the sky, which can be through windows, but not through steel or other physical obstructions.  Of course, this is not a major limitation, since its primary use is for outdoor activities. However, I've had it work well even inside buildings as long as it is placed in an outside-facing window.

*  This is not completely true as SPOT uses the GlobalStar satelite system and they do not quite have true planetary coverage, since there is a "hole" over the Pacific ocean.  Other than for those living in such remote locations and blue water sailing types such as myself, this is not much of a problem and will hopefully be resolved later this year or next when and if GlobalStar adds another satellite to their system.

These messages include both a short bit of pre-set text I can provide such as "Hi, this is Wayne reporting to you with my current location" and the lat/long coordinates at the time I pressed the button.  As part of the setup, I go the website and put in the mobile phone numbers (for text messages) or the e-mail addresses of the people I want to receive these messages. Thereafter, every time I press the √ CheckIn button, all of these people get this short message with my updated location. Simple, handy, powerful.

Having used this for the past few months while I've been out sailing, I've also come to appreciate that this lets everyone who cares not only know where I am, but also that I'm OK since I have had to consciously press the √ CheckIn button.

Track Progress:  The SPOT also has an automated position reporting option that they call "SPOTcasting" and I use this a great deal. When it's turned on (by simply holding down the  √ CheckIn button for 5 seconds), SPOT automatically transmits my lat/long coordinates every 10 minutes for the next 24 hours to a web server. 

 

Of course, it would be rather obnoxious to have these going to people's mobile phones or e-mail inboxes, so instead, these "SPOTcasting" messages are just stored on a server and are accessible to me as either a historical log, or as a set of points displayed on a map that I can share with anyone.  Initially, I could only provide access to people by giving them my login information and password for the site, but a few weeks ago they finally added my #1 wishlist request, which is the ability to create and share a web page that displays all my check and track points "live" on an interactive map like this. By combining or "mashing up" an interactive online map (Google maps) with a feed of my check points and/or track points as they are broadcast from my SPOT via satellite messages to this server page, I am able to provide access to the complete history of my travels and my current or last location to anyone with a browser.

* I do my best to practice the experiential learning I'm so often expound on here, and real-world use is one of the key requirements and values I have for these Cool Tool posts. If you're interested in a real world example of the use of SPOT type technology ,you can follow this link to my personal travels of late.  I'm writing this on June-4-2008 at about 14:07 UTC so I'll let you figure out where I was at that time. 

Emergency use:

Fortunately I have not had to use either of these yet, but SPOT has two more buttons for emergency use:

Ask for Help:  I would press this one for non-life-threatening siuations. It is diffferent from the CheckIn message because it sends out a pre-programmed message to my contact list, telling them I need assistance and giving them my location data and a link to it on Google Maps.

Alert 9-1-1:  This, as you might expect, is for life-threatening situations, and it's the one you hope you never need!  When pressed, this sends an alert to the Emergency Reponse Center and sends a distress signal. the appropriate responders at that location, such as police, Coast guard, country's embassy or consulate or other emergency response or search-and-rescue teams.  It also notifies my emergency contact person(s), which I have provided when I initially set up the device.

And that's it!  Simple, easy, powerful.  The SPOT is not for everyone, but this is part of what I had in mind for these Cool Tool posts—not a Top Ten list of what is most popular (there are lots of these for you already), and not just something shiny and new, but something very useful and valuable for the right person at the right time in the right context. We (both individually and as groups) are unique "snowflakes", as are our situations, and so these Cool Tools are aimed at helping all of us discover things that will match our unique needs or the needs of those around us, and share a part of the overall Snowflake Effect, which my great colleague Erik Duval speaks of and write about so often.

Hope this SPOT satellite messenger is of value and interest to you.

***********

Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?