Aging: Growing Older Is Found to Hurt Decision Making

[29 January 2008 - New York Times] For the especially unscrupulous con artist, the elderly are a tempting target. Now researchers have confirmed in the lab what frauds already knew instinctively: as they grow older, even people who seem perfectly on top of things may have trouble making good decisions. The researchers based their findings on a series of tests given to two groups of healthy people, one ages 26 to 55, the other 56 to 85. The goal was to see how well the older volunteers used the skills often demanded of them when making decisions in real life about activities like investments, insurance and estate planning. “Such decisions would be a challenge even for young adults,” the researchers note in the current Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. But when age is taken into account, they said, along with the abundance of shady marketing schemes, the challenge becomes even greater. More

Toni Morrison Praises Obama's Creative Imagination, Brilliance and Wisdom

[28 January 2008 - New York Times] Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of author Toni Morrison, who once labeled Bill Clinton as the ''first black president.'' Morrison said she has has admired Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but cited Obama's ''creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.'' Morrison said her endorsement had little to do with Obama's race -- he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas -- but rather his personal gifts. Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement. ''In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates,'' Morrison wrote. ''That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it." More

It's the New Economy, Stupid

Sunday's New York Times Magazine had a great piece asking why the presidential candidates continue to spend time and rhetoric in old-economy settings, such as factories.

[27 January 2008 - New York Times - Sunday Magazine] Why do presidential candidates touting their concern for the economy pose with factory workers rather than with ballet troupes? After all, the U.S. now has more choreographers (16,340) than metal-casters (14,880), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More people make their livings shuffling and dealing cards in casinos (82,960) than running lathes (65,840), and there are almost three times as many security guards (1,004,130) as machinists (385,690). Whereas 30 percent of Americans worked in manufacturing in 1950, fewer than 15 percent do now. The economy as politicians present it is a folkloric thing. ... Today’s economic anxiety is not the same anxiety that simmered between 1980 and 2000. Back then, recessions and slowdowns were understood as the pangs of a new economy struggling to be born. But the recession we now seem to be entering is to the information age what the recession of, say, 1957-1958 was to the industrial age — a “normal” recession in the midst of an economy with stable bases, an economy that (to use a current cliché) “is what it is.” The “jobs of the future” that were promised 20 years ago are here. Choreographers, blackjack dealers and security guards have replaced factory workers as the economy’s backbone, if not yet its symbol. New economies have always required a kind of initiation fee of those who would participate fully in them. As the historian Richard Hofstadter showed in “The Age of Reform,” the aftermath of the Civil War was marked by paeans to the prosperity that would arise from technological change. The 19th-century farmer went to great lengths to join it. “His demand for expensive machinery,” Hofstadter wrote, “his expectation of higher standards of living and his tendency to go into debt to acquire extensive acreage created an urgent need for cash and tempted the farmer into capitalizing more and more on his greatest single asset: the unearned appreciation in the value of his land.” These problems will be familiar to many a 21st-century security guard or Wal-Mart cashier. They are the problems not of someone “left behind” in the old economy but of someone struggling in the new. More

This is not to say that the job changes and job losses in factory and mill communities are not important. Rather, that today's - and tomorrow's - economy is pretty far removed from what those jobs historically meant. Focusing on new kinds of support for today's workers, support that looks different than it did in a manufacturing and industrial era, should be emphasized by at least some of the candidates. Yet these ideas don't seem prevalent in any of the campaigns.

Where is the candidate who acknowledges that creativity - in all its many and varied forms - is at the heart of community and economic development?

My Eastern Connecticut community is a former thread mill town. Two fantastic mill buildings have been renovated. One has become ArtSpace housing, while the other is partially open for something new. Clearly, these buildings will never again house major manufacturing. The challenge that our community, along with many others, faces is how creativity becomes the new threads for weaving our community's future. These threads of creativity are not just about the arts, but about every aspect of community development:

• Social threads ... including diversity, new ideas, new businesses, new music, openness, welcoming
• Economic threads ... including local inventiveness, innovation, entrepreneurship, preservation
• Education threads ... including children, universities, talents, knowledge, research, lifelong learning, collaborations
• Political threads ... including openness, collaboration, independence and interdependence, common interests
• Sustainable threads ... including green community, natural amenities, regional trails and parks, locally owned farms
• Creative threads ... imagination, creative thinking, new ideas, arts, culture

This is the focus of a proposal submitted by our town to the Case Foundation's "Make It Your Own" Awards, which recognize citizen-centered approaches to civic engagement. The idea for "Weaving a New Willimantic" with the threads of creativity was selected as one of the Case Foundation's Top 100 Finalist ideas from nearly 5000 proposals, and is currently under consideration as a Top 20 idea.

Creativity is a core human drive. People seek opportunities to develop and express this part of themselves in the community, whether in business, arts, learning, politics, volunteerism or any number of other areas. The new economy requires policies that develop and support the skills of creative thinking and innovation, facilitate environments where such creativity can be expressed and channeled, and candidates and politicians who at least acknowledge that we are in a different economic epoch.

New perspectives on Chinese innovation

[28 January 2008 - DEMOS - UK] China has big plans to boost its capacity for homegrown innovation. It is rising fast up the global league tables for investment, publications and patents, and a recent review by the OECD concludes that China 'is now a major R&D player'. But further progress will depend on the playing out of a complicated set of tensions: between the planned economy and the market; between national priorities and global networks; between the hardware of research infrastructure and the software of culture, skills and creativity.This half day workshop aims to provide a series of fresh perspectives on Chinese innovation, whilst also encouraging networking and an exchange of ideas between the many UK-based projects now working on aspects of Chinese innovation. Speakers include:

• Gang Zhang, Principal Administrator, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry
• Richard Halkett, Executive Director of Policy and Research, NESTA
• Simon Collinson, Professor of International Business and Innovation, Warwick Business School
• Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology & Director, BIOS Centre, London School of Economics
• Rushanara Ali, Associate Director, The Young Foundation
• David Tyfield, Research Associate, Lancaster University & Demos

More Information

Survey: Schools fail to teach innovation

[22 January 2008 - eSchool News] U.S. teens say they aren't being prepared well for technology, engineering careers. ... It's widely believed our ability to innovate and prepare students for careers in science and technology will be key factors in keeping the U.S. competitive in the global economy. Yet, nearly three out of five American teens (59 percent) do not believe their high school is preparing them adequately for a career in technology or engineering, according to the 2008 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey that gauges Americans' attitudes toward invention and innovation. The disparity is more pronounced among some groups historically underrepresented in these fields. Roughly two-thirds of African-American teens (64 percent) and teen girls (67 percent) believe they are not being prepared well in school for these careers. The survey's news is not all bad: It reveals enormous optimism among America's youth--provided educators are savvy enough to change the way their schools teach. More

Some worry arts classes being left behind

[25 January 2008 - The Oklahoman] Americans want schoolchildren to learn the arts along with basic subjects, according to a new poll that gives ammunition to those pushing for more creativity in education. The poll was released at a news conference here Thursday that featured representatives of various educational and other organizations, including the Oklahoma Creativity Project, that are trying to encourage imagination and innovation. Some said they were worried music and art classes were becoming victims of the increasing focus in schools on standardized testing. John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, said teachers feel like they're wearing an "instructional straightjacket” because of the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind act and by states. More

The Moral Imagination of Entrepreneurs

[January 2008 - Inc. Magazine] ... The spirit of entrepreneurship includes imagination, inventiveness and openness to the new. This spirit of creative response aligns with the capacity to exercise moral imagination and to see ethical problems in a new light. To be sure, our most fundamental ethical values -- values such as honesty, avoiding doing harm, keeping commitments -- are grounded in timeless traditions and are not likely to be soon abandoned. But it is in the application of these ethical values to emerging, unique situations, where moral imagination and the entrepreneurial spirit can make a decisive difference. More

Being Creative ...

From one of the jottings in British Novelist Anthony Powell's "A Writer's Notebook" (published posthumously in 2001): "You can't be a creative artist if you are in any restrictive sense an intellectual snob." [Quoted in "Come dancing" in The Guardian, 26 January 2008)

What makes you happy? These seniors know

[24 January 2008 - Wicked Local - Cambridge] The seniors at Cadbury Commons now have a new skill to master: laughing out loud for one minute a day — every day. Even if there’s nothing at all to laugh about. Last week, retired psychology professor Freda Rebelsky stopped by the independent and assisted-living facility to educate the residents about how to be happier. The pursuit of happiness is not a new concept, considering it’s written into the Declaration of Independence. But positive psychology is a relatively new field that looks at what makes people happy, instead of what ails them. More

Gates Calls For Kinder - Creative - Capitalism

[24 January 2008 - Wall Street Journal] Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal. ... Mr. Gates sees a role for himself spurring companies into action, he said in the interview. "The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy -- even beyond the market opportunities -- that's something that appropriately ought to be done," he said. More

Top Job

[22 January 2008 - HOW Blog] Fast Company just published it lists of the best jobs to have now and in the future. On that list: Interaction Designer. Interaction designers don't just design. They work with executives to define goals for the products and systems they help develop. And they mix reporting, psychology, and anthropology to see how people actually use what they design. More

NYT: The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?

[20 January 2008 - New York Times] ... Whether humans will embrace or resist an innovation is the billion-dollar question facing designers of novel products and services. Why do people adapt to some new technologies and not to others? Fortunes are made and lost on the answer. Great innovations have foundered over human stubbornness. Consider the Picturephone, trumpeted by AT&T at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 as a major technological advance. Engineers reasoned that if hearing someone’s voice over the phone was terrific, wouldn’t seeing a face be even better?
Consumers didn’t think so. AT&T’s Picturephone, which would have added around $90 to a person’s monthly phone bill in 1974, a huge amount for the time, “was superfluous, adding little information to voice alone, especially considering its high price,” said Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University. Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers. Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination. In 1990, the poet Wendell Berry famously declared his perpetual allegiance to the typewriter in his essay, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” More

335 Inventors to Test Their Brainpower at Creativity Show

[20 January 2008 - Arab News]  Over 335 inventors, men and women alike, are set to showcase their brainpower at the Kingdom’s first national exhibition to highlight creativity, scheduled for March. The exhibition, organized by the King Abdul Aziz and His Companions Foundation for the Gifted (KAHCFG) and Saudi Aramco, is set to be the first of its kind in the country. More

Knowledge Vital for Progress: Khaled

[13 January 2008 - Arab News ]Makkah Governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal inaugurated the first Arab knowledge economy conference here yesterday and hoped that its deliberations would boost ongoing efforts to promote knowledge-based economies in the Arab and Islamic world. “If economics is the ruling factor in our modern world, knowledge economy is the fuel required for economic development... Knowledge has become even more important than weapons,” the prince told experts from different countries attending the conference. More

Politics of unshackling creativity

[31 December 2007 - Economic Times - India] We need a new, holistic vision of reform as something that emancipates, unleashing every individual’s creative potential and nourishing it in a framework that is both global and positively enabling at the same time. In the beginning was the word and the word was Reform. Ever since PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh commenced the dismantling of dirigisme in July 1991, the word has resounded across the length and breadth of the country, in seminar halls as well as at election rallies, eliciting fear and loathing in some quarters and hope and joy in some others, galvanising protest and criticism, on the one hand, and releasing, on the other, productive energies hitherto undetected. ...  We need an integral vision of reform that inspires not just entrepreneurs who set up new factories but also peasants who give up land to build those factories. It’s time politicians stopped pushing reform bit by bit and only as a covert operation. Reform must be hailed as the practical path to emancipation. More

Making talent a strategic priority

[January 2008 - The McKinsey Quarterly] Finding and retaining talented employees is at least as challenging today as it was ten years ago. Demographic trends, globalization, and the growth of knowledge work have intensified the external pressures on companies—but many of them compound the problem by failing to make talent management a strategic priority. Executives can act on their rhetoric about the importance of employees in creating competitive advantage and embed a robust talent strategy in the overall business strategy if they focus on all workforce segments and not just on the top performers, create different value propositions for employees with different characteristics, and increase the role and capabilities of the human-resources (HR) function. More

Imagination is Real

[2008 - Edge Foundation] In response to the Edge 2008 World Question: "WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?"
Imagination is Real
By Alison Gopnik, Psychologist, UC-Berkeley; Coauthor, The Scientist In the Crib
Recently, I've had to change my mind about the very nature of knowledge because of an obvious, but extremely weird fact about children - they pretend all the time. Walk into any preschool and you'll be surrounded by small princesses and superheroes in overalls - three-year-olds literally spend more waking hours in imaginary worlds than in the real one. Why? Learning about the real world has obvious evolutionary advantages and kids do it better than anyone else. But why spend so much time thinking about wildly, flagrantly unreal worlds? The mystery about pretend play is connected to a mystery about adult humans - especially vivid for an English professor's daughter like me. Why do we love obviously false plays and novels and movies? ... For human beings the really important evolutionary advantage is our ability to create new worlds. More

Innovation in platforms

[15 January 2008 - DEMOS - UK] In our Public Value of Science and Atlas of Ideas reports, we explored the role of science-based innovation in addressing big global challenges. Looking at science globally, we are faced with the question of what sort of innovation applies to what scale of problem. It seems that the bigger the challenge, the more innovative the solution needs to be. It's something that the new Technology Strategy Board are looking at. They are interested in how to get business and the government working together on big sociotechnical questions. They call them "Innovation Platforms" They've started with work on Intelligent Transport Systems and Network Security - nodding towards policies on road-pricing and big social IT systems - NHS connecting for health, ID cards etc. Next, they're looking at low carbon vehicles, assisted living and sustainable buildings. Their aim is to crowbar innovation systems into doing things differently - being more innovative about innovation. As a new agency, with sparkly new offices down in Swindon - as sparkly as Swindon gets, at any rate - they have an opportunity to change things. Good luck to them. More

Aggression as rewarding as sex, food and drugs

[14 January 2008 - EurekAlert! / Vanderbilt University] New research from Vanderbilt University shows for the first time that the brain processes aggression as a reward - much like sex, food and drugs - offering insights into our propensity to fight and our fascination with violent sports like boxing and football. The research will be published online the week of Jan. 14 by the journal Psychopharmacology. “Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food,” Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics, said. “We have found that the ‘reward pathway’ in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.” “It is well known that dopamine is produced in response to rewarding stimuli such as food, sex and drugs of abuse,” Maria Couppis, who conducted the study as her doctoral thesis at Vanderbilt, said. “What we have now found is that it also serves as positive reinforcement for aggression.” More

Don't just stand there, think

[13 January 2008 - Boston Globe] New research suggests that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies ... When you read something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you move your eyes in a particular pattern? How you answer questions like these, it turns out, may determine how long it will take for you to decipher what you're reading, solve your puzzle, or get your keys back. The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking. Another recent study suggested that stage actors remember their lines better when they are moving. And in one study published last year, subjects asked to move their eyes in a specific pattern while puzzling through a brainteaser were twice as likely to solve it. The term most often used to describe this new model of mind is "embodied cognition," and its champions believe it will open up entire new avenues for understanding - and enhancing - the abilities of the human mind. Some educators see in it a new paradigm for teaching children, one that privileges movement and simulation over reading, writing, and reciting. Specialists in rehabilitative medicine could potentially use the emerging findings to help patients recover lost skills after a stroke or other brain injury. The greatest impact, however, has been in the field of neuroscience itself, where embodied cognition threatens age-old distinctions - not only between brain and body, but between perceiving and thinking, thinking and acting, even between reason and instinct - on which the traditional idea of the mind has been built. More

People listen to world differently

[14 January 2008 - Channel 4 News / PA News] No two people listen to the world in the same way, new research suggests. Every individual's brain is tuned differently to the sound environment, scientists believe. "If you could borrow someone else's ears you would have real difficulty in locating the source of the sounds, at least until your brain had relearned to do it," said study leader Dr Jan Schnupp, from the University of Oxford. More

Two Views of Innovation, Colliding in Washington

[13 January 2008 - New York Times] As the Senate prepares to tinker with the nation’s patent laws this spring, it’s worth recalling the law of unintended consequences. From the vantage point of a half-century, for example, it’s clear that the formation of Silicon Valley involved serendipity more than intentional design. The co-inventor of the transistor and the founder of the valley’s first chip company, William Shockley, moved to Palo Alto, Calif., because his mother lived there. Moreover, although the transistor was invented at Bell Labs in New Jersey, an antitrust lawsuit during the 1950s forced the AT&T phone behemoth to license the technology openly at a nominal charge. And, the venture capital industry, an important part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, was given a big boost by Congress in the late 1970s when legislation loosened pension fund regulations — touching off an early wave of high-profile initial public offerings. Now, three decades later, Congress is likely to write legislation that could again reshape the contours of innovation and entrepreneurship for perhaps decades to come, in ways that are hard to predict. More

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows

[11 January 2008 - ScienceDaily] People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind. Psychological research has established that American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception. But are they reflected in brain activity patterns? More

RISD's New President - Mr. Creative?

[December 2007 - Rhode Island School of Design] The Board of Trustees of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) announced on December 21, 2007 that John Maeda, Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab, has accepted the offer to become the 16th president of RISD.

RISD Board Chair Merrill Sherman said, “We are delighted to name John Maeda as successor to Roger Mandle. RISD has a special obligation to play a leadership role in the world of art and design, nationally and internationally. Creativity and innovation are more important than ever. We believe John will be a bold, innovative and exciting president and will enhance RISD’s role in helping to shape and inform art and design in this century.”

John Maeda has a distinguished career in humanizing technology for creative endeavors. He has been a professor at MIT since 1996 where he is currently the Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab, responsible for managing research relationships with 70+ industrial organizations. He has also been a practicing designer since 1990 and has developed advanced projects for an array of major corporations including Cartier, Google, Philips, Reebok, Samsung, among others. His early work in digital media design is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2001, Maeda’s works of contemporary art have been exhibited in one-man shows in London, New York, and Paris to wide acclaim. His highly regarded fourth book, The Laws of Simplicity has been published in fourteen languages and has become the reference work for discussions on the highly elusive theme of “simplicity” in the complex digital world. Maeda has lectured at numerous conferences, universities, museums, and to corporate audiences throughout the world on his philosophy of “humanizing technology.”

Maeda said, “It is my deepest honor to be selected by the RISD Presidential Search Committee which was comprised of an extremely committed group of students, staff, faculty, and trustees — bringing all their unique perspectives to the table. Furthermore, to receive the unanimous approval of the Board of Trustees is a gratifying vote of confidence that instills in me a real determination to advance all aspects of RISD as an institution representative of the highest standards of learning. I look forward to working with the incredibly inspiring and creative community of RISD to realize the possibilities for the world’s first truly 21st century university of art and design.”

Maeda will assume his responsibilities as president of RISD in June 2008.

Stepping down from the RISD presidency will be President Roger Mandle, the longest-serving president since the early 20th century. During Mandle’s fifteen-year tenure, the size of the RISD faculty increased by 50%, the RISD endowment has grown by a factor of five and RISD’s first capital campaign exceeded its $85 million goal by over $20 million, and the RISD campus has expanded significantly, among other major accomplishments. Mandle said, “John Maeda is a commanding presence in both the fine arts and corporate design worlds. But just as important, he is a humanist. He is a genius — and he gets things done. He is just what RISD needs.” More (including a short video introduction to John Maeda, in his own words)

The Perils of Innovation Overdrive

[26 December 2007 - Harvard Business Online - Bill Taylor] I believe the big "innovation story" of 2008 won’t involve a cool product, a specific company, or a new creative hotspot. Rather, it will involve a general sense of anxiety about a phenomenon that I call Innovation Overdrive. And since 2008 is a presidential-election year, this general anxiety may influence the political conversation in the country. (If, that is, we can persuade the candidates to stop talking exclusively about religion and immigration, but that’s a topic for a different forum.) What is Innovation Overdrive? First, the gnawing sense that even though breakthrough advances in computing, communications, and consumer electronics are wonderful, anything in excess is a poison -- and it feels like we’re all chugging from a poisoned chalice. ... I fear that this same tension -- between creativity and responsibility -- is being resolved in the same irresponsible way in many other sectors of the economy, and that in 2008 we’ll see more fallout from an unalloyed infatuation with the new. More

Qlogging with Albert Einstein

A great summary and reminder of Einstein's views about the value of creativity and life ...

[3 January 2008 - Kevin Bartoy blog] ... If we truly recognize Einstein as a genius and truly believe that his intelligence provided a special understanding of the world, then we must not stop our exploration of his wisdom at E=mc2. His ideas and opinions concerning education, religion, politics, and pacifism are just as important as his scientific contributions concerning relativistic cosmology, capillary action, and critical opalescence. He provided us all with the gift of his intellect. It is now up to us to repay this wisdom. In Einstein's own words, "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

Einstein quotes include:

• "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
• "Never memorize what you can look up in books."
• "The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing."

More

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

[30 December 2007 - New York Times] It's a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience. Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, "When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin'." In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you've built around yourself. More