Spigit Blog - Collaborative Networks Produce Better Ideas

A key aspect of what one might term ‘Innovation 2.0′ is the ability to share ideas among a community, and have that community help identify and refine top ideas. It turns out that a University of Chicago professor studied this dynamic in 2003, and found it to be true.

Professor Ronald Burt wrote an academic paper, published in the American Journal of Sociology, entitled Structural Holes and Good Ideas (pdf). “Structural holes” are the gaps that exist within organizations between people and groups of people. Every organization has them. They represent a lack of communication between people, and are a limiting factor on companies’ ability to be agile and responsive to change conditions.

Professor Burt decided to focus on individuals who broker these gaps: being connected among different groups. Such brokerage is the core driver for companies that implement social software, overcoming the inability to make knowledge and perspectives more widely available. In studying this, Professor Burt put forth this hypothesis:

Idea generation at some point involves someone moving knowledge from this group to that, or combining bits of knowledge across groups. Where brokerage is social capital, there should be evidence of brokerage associated with good ideas, and vice versa.

His research shows his hypothesis to be true: better social connections improve ideas.

Read the whole thing, there are some interesting diagrams and stuff.

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Collaborative Networks Produce Better Ideas

A Return to Spirited Blather

However, I’ve been sitting on this for months and have come to the conclusion today that it’s more important to just start the conversation flowing again. And so, this post marks the first of that; I’ll sort out everything else out as the external need arises.

I’m coining a personal principle: if given the freedom to choose between organizing and making stuff, don’t let the allure of organization get in the way of making. I really should organize a lot of things here, but I am going to have to call down external pressures from heavens to make things happen. Being a person who is activated by the immediate needs and circumstances of other people, it’s important then that I create the means for which those other people can make their needs known. And maybe that will be easier if I resume the conversational blogging model I had years ago. We shall see.

Oh, and BTW, I am done tweeking this site for a while. I need to spend more time making cool stuff and less time worrying about keywords…

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Dave Seah is Reading My Mind

Creative Streak: Solo Creativity, Part 1

As always, you should articulate the goal (what are you trying to solve?), and the need or problem (what’s preventing you from being successful?) Start with the tips below, but not necessarily in order. Write or draw your ideas on blank paper. (Be environmentally friendly and use old pages from your printer!) Don’t worry about how long you brainstorm. Sometimes it’s best to brainstorm for 10-15 minutes, return to a previous project, then return for another stretch of brainstorming an hour or so later on. You can keep this up for several days, returning whenever you need a mental break.

A variation of the “solo” idea, sometimes I write my ideas in the body of an e-mail, then exchange it with a colleague elsewhere in the world for additional ideas. Living in Australia, I simply have to wait for my network to respond with new ideas overnight. One final tip: keep your notes handy and visible to your eye.

1. Select a noun.

A descriptive noun conjures up different aspects which you can use to brainstorm ideas. Open to any page of a book – or better yet, a dictionary – and select a noun at random (preferably one with no connection to your topic or problem). When you combine this word with your problem or need, what idea does the “merger” suggest? If one word doesn’t work, pick another, then another. Go to here for a list of my favourite nouns. If you’re addicted to the Internet, try www.dictionary.com or www.thesaurus.com.

2. Or, try an action verb.

Verbs work differently in creative thinking because – by their very nature – they suggest action, specifically a change. Pick any specific attribute of your product or service that you believe is central to the problem. Next, select any action verb from a variety of sources (see above) and force-fit it with the problem. The first few “mergers” might be odd, but don’t despair. I typically go through 40-45 verbs in one sitting before I look back at no more than 8-10 good ideas. Again, go here for a list of my favourite verbs.

There is more at the original article.

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Too Sick to Blog

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you sud­denly being “dis­co­ve­red” by some big shot, your plan will pro­bably fail.

5. You are res­pon­si­ble for your own expe­rience.

6. Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kin­der­gar­ten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Com­pa­nies that squelch crea­ti­vity can no lon­ger com­pete with com­pa­nies that cham­pion crea­ti­vity.

9. Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.

Number 6 is one of my favorites: Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kin­der­gar­ten.
“So you’ve got the itch to do something” is how this chapter starts, and I think that we all feel this sometimes. McLeod describes all sorts of situations and ideas that may occur to you to create something, but you are afraid that is isn’t “good enough”, or no one will want to publish it, or any number of reasons not to do it.

So what is his amazing and powerful advice? Do it. Make it. Put your heart and soul into making something amazing that will blow the minds of people that see it. “If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.” If you have even the tiniest bit of creative spark in yourself, you will know that his is true. It might be buried way down deep, but you know it.

Read this book.

Then get started on that amazing thing. I am working on mine and I feel awesome. In fact, after reading this, and an opportunity came for me to take another day job (see #7 above), I took it. Because now the time that I spend on my “creative stuff” feels so much more valuable, more meaningful. And the small idea that I had for a Productivity E-book is turning into something special and powerful and honest and true. And it is going to be much cooler than the original plan called for. Stay tuned.

(I get something like $0.50 if you buy it through this link)

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Book Review: Ignore Everybody by Hugh McLeod

The good news is that my GTD system has survived the transition and I am pretty confident that I will be able to get back on track with posting and finishing up my productivity e-book by the end of the month.

Right now I am pretty busy training some new staff, getting expenses in line, and creating a community for the restaurant (follow us on Twitter at @WolfeboroInn), we will be Tweeting about our specials and other cool stuff.

Thank you for your patience and support, I am looking forward to having some good, real-world examples on productivity in the workplace for you shortly. Have a great day, and let me know what kind of tips you might be looking for in your own work-life situation.

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Work-Life Transition

I have been thinking of writing a longer post on my development of my worklife for some time. One big part of improving my productivity is clear the workspace and to set up the right “buckets”. I have a picture clear on how to create a good workflow process, but I get overwhelmed now and then about all my old stuff that I have to go through. I have spent several days of my “vacation” to clean up things and I am starting to see the “light in the tunnel”…

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Evolution of the Ego Workspace

one of the most intriguing speakers at last month’s TEDGlobal 2009 was notorious graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. …[who] made an impression with some striking observations on career sabbaticals.

Sagmeister illustrated a traditional career as a timeline comprising three distinct “eras:” learning, work and retirement, with each “era” roughly taking up a third of one’s lifetime; around twenty-five years each.

While a confident minority of people might take a traditional career sabbatical, Sagmeister keeps his perspective and his work fresh by taking periodic sabbaticals throughout his career to date. In essence, Sagmeister closes his studio every eighth year, interspersing some of his retirement years into his active working career. This new career timeline looked more like learning, work, retirement, work, retirement…and so on.

Returning from a sabbatical in Indonesia back in 2007, Sagmeister realized his work had a new clarity, vision and purpose and that his “job became a calling again.” Sagmeister felt his post-sabbatical work was stronger and edgier; his year out provided the insight, innovation and income for the following seven years. So what is his formula?

1. Talk to people who’ve taken sabbaticals about how and why they did it, and what they learned.
2. Add five years to your planned working life.
3. Intersperse those extra years into your career, taking a year off every seventh year.

Humorously, Daniel Pink himself decided to re-imagine “going on sabbatical” as “taking a Sagmeister”!

My own career, over the past 5 years, has been very non-traditional. I have worked in 4 states, in 4 different industries/environments, and 8 different companies - and run my own business. I have not had a “job” now since Septtember, 2008, and I have a very fresh outlook on what I want to do with the next few years (more on this next week).

What do you think of the idea of taking one year off every seven? How would it affect your productivity, your personal relationships? Leave a comment.

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The Sabbatical as a Career-punctuation Mark

Uploaded on July 20, 2009
by koalazymonkey

Pretty inspirational, don’t you think?

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Writing is an Everyday Activity

How I invest my time in Social Media

Twitter presence. I love Twitter, because I get to talk to people that I know from all over the world about this and that. Many of these folks I met at conferences (see the next bullet) and they have amazing things to say, things that I can learn from every day. You can see my list of people that I follow here (hdbbstephen on Twitter), and you may notice that there are only about 500 of them.

I find it difficult to participate in conversations or catch the good information that comes from these folks if I follow many more than that. The good news is that many of these people share awesome links to other Twitter people that I don’t follow, so that the best of the best information still gets through. I also use Twitter for reaching out to new clients and readers for this site, but that is another post!

This is that post.

First things first, download TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more.

TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.

I love it. Yes, there are some other applications that you can use, and there are lots of opinions about all of them. I like the functionality of TweetDeck: Sorting your Follows into groups, maintaining lists of search results, and (best of all) the ability to Tweet from more than one Identity from the same screen - no more logging in and out of Twitter to utilized different personas.

Twitter as a Marketing Tool

I use Twitter (and flickr and FriendFeed - all linked together) as a marketing tool for my products and services - by providing value, sharing information and pictures, and joining in conversations or answering questions. One of the most important methods is finding people that have questions that I can answer via Twitter Search. I will type in some of the different topics that I can offer my help and see who is asking questions, then extend their conversation. For example, if you search for “WordPress Theme Help” you can see all sorts of people that have needs regarding their blogs and websites. Some of these are easy questions and some are more involved, but I always try to do something for them - sometimes it leads to a paying client, sometimes not. But it is good for Word-of-Mouth and a good investment of time.

Twitter as a Communication Tool

I love chatting with my friends and associates on Twitter, even if its not about valuable or business-related stuff. I will schedule some time for myself, usually in the evening, for just shooting the breeze with my Twitter friends that are scattered across the globe.

Important caveat: Twitter can be extremely addictive and hours can go by as you read your Twitterstream and jump in & out of conversations. I recommend that you schedule some time for tweeting and stick to that schedule! I usually set aside 2 or 3 half-hour periods throughout the day to log in and see what is going on.

What is your Twitter strategy? Leave a comment.

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How I Invest My Time in Twitter

The advantage of electronic media over paper, of course, is the ease of reordering data. However, electronic media suffers when it comes to direct manipulation of overlapping data; there is a lot of clicking and dragging of the mouse, which is slow and makes comparison of data sets cumbersome.

Cards do not have this disadvantage, and their tactile qualities make manipulating them a pleasure. They naturally lend themselves to manipulation; when you’re dealt a hand of cards, the first thing you do is order them according to your strategic intent. Cards can be grouped, stacked, stuck together, taped, glued, and shuffled.

“according to your strategic intent”

Well, now. Isn’t that a remarkable way of looking at things? Dave is, of course, talking about being dealt a hand of cards in a game (such as poker or what have you) but the metaphor is a powerful one. Earlier this year I fell in love with a notebook that I planned to use to keep a running list of my To-dos. Unfortunately, the running list just got too messy - as tasks were accomplished they were crossed off, but some were deferred and left behind. Pretty soon the “list” existed on a bunch of pages, with one or two items on each sheet.

Looking at these islands of incomplete activities made me think, “If this was important enough to get written in this notebook, why hasn’t it been important enough to do?”  - more accurately, had it been captured and stored in the wrong place? In either case, the list was making more work and stress than it was alleviating.

Thus, I am back to the index cards, and work is fun again. I still have a lot of things to do, and sometimes I re-arrange the order to accomodate changing circumstances, and sometimes I realize that I should file a card somewhere else.

The nice thing about using the cards is that I do not have to re-write the action or the notes and I do not need to have online access to retrieve them.

Any thoughts? Leave a comment.

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About Those Next Action Cards