Appelle, Boni, Incentives, Motivationstrainings - es gibt viele Versuche, die Leistung von Menschen zu verbessern. Schon lange weiß die Psychologie, dass dies alles fragwürdige Methoden der Motivationsförderung sind. Die Hirnforschung sattelt noch eins drauf.

The psychology of social commerce reveals the emotional elements that stimulate the human network. It is the understanding of the 6 pillars of social commerce that facilitates the development of a more cohesive and connected online experience for customers. More importantly, by investing in the value, productivity and efficiency of consumer decision making and not just the outcome, businesses can not only earn reciprocity and goodwill, but also earn social capital as a result…and, that’s priceless.

Professor Geert Hofstede calls the phenomenon "power distance." What makes it particularly relevant in Asia? Power distance is the degree to which less powerful members of institutions and organizations accept that power is distributed unequally. In very high power distance cultures, the lower level person will unfailingly defer to the higher level person, and feel relatively ok with that as it is the natural order. The higher level person accepts this truth as well — or metes out consequences for failure to comply. In low power distance cultures, everyone expects to be listened to regardless of rank or background, and they will reject leaders whom they perceive as autocratic or patronizing.

Turns out, multi-tasking online doesn’t positively exercise our brains or mental state. Heavy Internet users are 2.5 times more likely to be depressed. And web addiction reduces the white matter in our brains, basically the transmitters responsible for our memory and sensory abilities.

The results were pretty clear. Overall about a third of drivers failed to stop for pedestrians, but it was those in the most expensive cars that were disproportionately represented amongst the discourteous drivers. About 30% of drivers in the cheapest cars failed to stop compared with over 45% of those in the most expensive cars. Piff and colleagues then retired to the laboratory to see if they could catch upper class people cheating more than the lower classes on other sorts of tests. Sure enough, they could: "...upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals."

Auf der einen Seite kluge Gruppe, auf der anderen Seite der tumbe Mob? Wie ist diese Diskrepanz zu erklären? Für ihre Untersuchung nutzten die Forscher einen Intelligenztest, der auf abstrakt logischem Denken basiert, die soziale Intelligenz wird also nicht  gemessen. Daher lässt sich die vermeintliche Gruppenintelligenz nicht auf gesellschaftliche Fragen übertragen. Das Web 2.0, in diesem Fall Facebook, bietet vielen die Möglichkeit als „Opinion Leader“ aufzutreten und Gruppen zu bilden. Diese Gruppen sind zwar ähnlich, wie in der Untersuchung von Microsoft, homogen; befassen sich aber mit Fragestellung bei denen es nicht darum geht logisch zu denken sondern zwischen gesellschaftlich falsch und richtig zu entscheiden. Das ist in der Gruppe genauso komplex, wie für eine einzelne Person, egal ob off- oder online.

patterns as a way of making sense of group behaviour (and I'd say emergent phenomena galore)

"People should feel empowered by the idea of a science of team building, The idea that we can transmute the guess work of putting a team together into a rigorous methodology, and then continuously improve teams is exciting. Nothing will be more powerful, I believe, in eventually changing how organizations work."

Brown has continued her work on vulnerability and she shares a few insights now. Firstly, that it is not a weakness. This, she says, is a profoundly dangerous and pervasive myth. Secondly, that in order to understand the relationship between vulnerability and courage, we need to talk about shame. Jungian analysts call shame the “swampland of soul,” a lyrical construct that helps illuminate why it’s important to spend time on the topic, hardly one most of us care to dwell on. But, she says, in order to have a compelling conversation around race, we need to talk about privilege, which is all wrapped up in shame. In order to have a compelling conversation around healthcare, we need to understand that surgeons’ self-worth is stitched up in being all-powerful. All-powerful people don’t need checklists or make mistakes. We need to recognize and understand deep-rooted shame at the heart of any broken system if we are ever to change it.

In meinen Augen ist das ein zentraler Fehler aller Gamification-Ansätze, die ich bisher gesehen habe. In dem Moment, wo man Leute im Spiel hat, die die SoD abschalten und das Spiel nach den Spielregeln analysieren, statt seinen realweltlichen Zielen, die es verpacken soll, brechen diese Ansätze alle auseinander. Es kommt zur Einführung von Sonderregeln und am Ende zur Legalisierung der Willkürregel der Spielleitung ("Spielzüge, die offensichtlich zur Ausbeutung von Schwächen der Spielregeln gemacht werden, sind ungültig, auch wenn sie nach den Regeln legal sind."). Am Ende artet das Ganze in eine Art NOMIC-Partie aus, weil in jeder Gamification die Ziele der realen Welt und der spielerischen Verpackung niemals perfekt übereinstimmen. In dem Moment wo man ernsthafte Spieler hat, die das Spiel gewinnen wollen, anstatt sich mit dem realweltlichen Problem dahinter zu beschäftigen, wird jedes dieser Spiele zu einer Partie Nomic degenerieren, weil die realweltlichen Interessen der Veranstalter und die Interessen der ernsthaften Spieler sich beißen. Regelanwälte diskutieren Grenzfälle, und erweitern die Regeln zu einem Komplex, der am Ende zu kompliziert ist, um noch Spaß zu machen. Oder man bekommt Munchkins im Spiel - Powergamer, die nach den Regeln optimieren und allen anderen den Spaß am Spiel nehmen (außer man spielt Munchkin, das genau das zum Spielprinzip erhebt).

Unangenehme Mitarbeiter Low-Performer zu nennen ist eine neue Entdeckung der Manager und Personalchefs. Der Anglizismus läßt die Sache eleganter klingen. Ein ausgesprochen zynischer Begriff in Zeiten großer Arbeitslosigkeit und gestiegenem Rentenalter. Als ob der Druck schon nicht hoch genug wäre! Im Internet finden sich zahllose Seminare, wie man diese Low-Performer ausgrenzt. Mit Mobbing hat das natürlich nichts zu tun. Man schikaniert sie nur systematisch mit allen Mitteln, was auf dasselbe hinauskommt. Mobbing macht krank. Es ist an der Zeit, daß deutsche Gerichte dem nicht mehr hinterherhinken.

When a company starts to lose its major battles, the truth often becomes the first casualty. CEOs and employees work tirelessly to develop creative narratives that help them avoid dealing with the obvious facts. Despite their intense creativity, many companies often end up with the exact same false explanations.

You’re absolutely right! Instant gratification has ruined the art of learning. It’s especially sad to see kids who are only interested in remembering enough to pass tests, rather than actually knowing something new and important.

Maslow's model needs rewiring so it matches our brains. Belongingness is the driving force of human behavior, not a third tier activity. The system of human needs from bottom to top, shelter, safety,sex, leadership, community, competence and trust, are dependent on our ability to connect with others. Belonging to a community provides the sense of security and agency that makes our brains happy and helps keep us safe.

This challenge of learning an art is essentially a process of internalizing the decision-making process framed to a very specific context. How you get better at it is by learning to accelerate how you recognize known (often complex) patterns. The higher your skill level the more complex the pattern you can perform and make decisions on without having to consciously think about it. It is in effect non-rational because you are so attuned to the habit that your body may act or react before you even realize you are doing it.

Taken from the point of view of these 3 motivators for intellectual activity, Google+ is a platform that allows you to use all of them in the most complete and holistic way.  I have read about many people that were not actively blogging or creating content before G+, and for which this platform has opened the doors of collective creation.

What has been your experience when creating content for G+? Do you consider that the factors delineated above are in-line with your motivations for posting?

All of these tools are windows into something much deeper -  us and our desire to communicate. I would bet a lot that we are much closer to the beginning than the end of a period of great change.  The Industrial Revolution took about one hundred and fifty years and we're only about fifty years into the current revolution.

 

From my vantage point I don't see the younger generation as being more adroit simply because they grew up in a new world.  They were surrounded by different tools and defaulted to them making them their own, but these tools will change.  The term digital native is popular, but I don't see the process of change as abrupt with people on one side or the other of a divide -- a rich continuum of tools has been emerging.  Some will replace old modes of communications entirely and some will serve niche groups differently.  And there are surprises when very old tools prove to be much more robust than imagined.

 

The key is that we need to change ourselves. We need to transform, not them. We don’t need to occupy Wall Street, we simply need to occupy Main Street because that is where they occupy us. It is not enough to marvel at our numbers, civil disobedience, and cardboard signs. We need a Science of change so that we can do so.

eine Typologie aus dem Gruselkabinett der schlimmsten Großraumvampire, Bürozombies und Schreibtischplagegeister

Modell der emotionalen Achterbahnfahrt entwickelt. Andere sogenannte Change-Kurven-Modelle, die in der Literatur vorgestellt werden, konnten mich nicht überzeugen. Als Grundlage diente mir die Forschungsarbeit von Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, die mit ihren Untersuchungen der Reaktionen von Menschen auf den extremsten aller Wandel, den bevorstehenden Tod, zur Begründerin der Sterbeforschung wurde. Sie entwickelte ein Phasen-Modell, das unbewusste Strategien zur Bewältigung extrem schwieriger Lebenssituationen beschreibt. Ich habe dieses Modell erweitert, grafisch aufbereitet und die Konsequenzen für Sie als Führungskraft abgeleitet

Lediglich 13 Prozent der deutschen Arbeitnehmer verfügen aktuell über eine hohe emotionale Bindung zu ihrem Arbeitgeber und sind bereit, sich für ihn und dessen Ziele einzusetzen. Die große Mehrheit der Beschäftigten (66 Prozent) aber leistet nur noch Dienst nach Vorschrift. Weitere 21 Prozent sind sogar derart demotiviert, dass sie sich am Arbeitsplatz bereits destruktiv verhalten – so weit, dass dies schon zu Lasten der Leistungs- und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der Unternehmen geht.

People who grow from change typically carry little, if any, negative baggage from their difficult and costly ordeal. If injustices were done to them along the way, they forgive and/or move on with the rest of their lives. If they made mistakes, they don’t indulge in a lot of guilt or self-incrimination, because they believe they were making the best decision they could at the time. People who grow from their trials and tribulations tend to be more grateful than resentful about the price they paid to achieve what they ultimately accomplish. They often report that everything they have experienced in their life, both good and bad, was necessary for them to be prepared to achieve and embrace the rewards they eventually enjoyed.

“Based on his experience in creating, leading, and managing communities and communities programs, both inside and outside of organizations, Garfield defines and describes 10 principles for successful communities. He offers real-world examples and discusses tools while emphasizing key themes: Communities should be independent of organization structure; they are different from teams; are not sites, blogs or wikis; community leadership and membership should be voluntary; communities span boundaries; need a critical mass of members; start with as broad a scope as is reasonable; need to be actively nurtured; and more.”

That's why the promise of technology - "provide it, and they will use it" - has seldom been delivered in KM. "Provide it and they will use it" will work for natural acts, such as friendship, socialising, gossip etc. But not for unnatural acts. Just giving them smart shiny new technology (even web 2.0 technology) will not convince them to do something unnatural.

In fast jedem Team gibt es mindestens einen “komischen Kollegen” oder Chef, sagen die beiden Hamburger Autoren Svenja Hofert und Thorsten Visbal (“Ich hasse Teams“), die bei ihren Recherchen mehr als 100 Personen zur Teamarbeit befragt haben. Doch was tun, wenn ein Kollege oder eine Kollegin den Abteilungsfrieden und die persönliche Zufriedenheit am Arbeitsplatz stört?

Social messaging offers much more than collaboration when individuals include their multidimensional perspectives in the Enterprise stream.

What is "collaboration"? It's a frequently asked question. In my masterclasses, I start with the short hand, to "co-labour" on one slide, and then expand it to "Collaboration means people working with other people towards a common outcome." Note that there is no mention of technology in the definition.

But, the problem with my definition above is that it's extremely broad. It covers just about anything we do at work with other people!

...

In summary:
- "Collaboration" is a special case situation where people work together in a particular way towards a common outcome.
- In common usage, "collaboration" is a nearly meaningless term, because it defines too wide a scope of people "working together". It's a buzzword and a trendy term.

dynamic and stressful idea that leadership becomes a "social fact" because someone claims leadership and others grant it.
Do you think it's better to keep the social exchange of leader/follower a mystery or clearly explain it to employees? If it should be explained then new channels of employee education emerge. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.hbr.org%2Fimagining-the-future-of-leadership%2F2010%2F04%2Fleadership-its-much-more-than.html

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein debate the power and perils of intuition for senior executives.

some interesting evidence for the spread of good behaviour. It's certainly nice to imagine our acts of kindness reverberating among groups of strangers who we'll never meet

"In blog based discussions there has been talk of 'effective' group sizes and network sizes in the past (see some of it here from 2003 and 2004). Most of that however was always based on anecdotal 'laws' or Dunbar's number (the application of which I usually see as the mis-interpretation of Dunbar's theory)."

"Read the whole thing. This is a great discussion by someone on the ground, detailing ow hard it can be to get people to adapt to new technology.

Different organizations have different rates that innovation diffuses through them. Many do absolutely nothing to facilitate this diffusion in any way. It just happens by essentially ad hoc means.

I’ve written about how change and innovations traverse a community. A better way to facilitate such things is to put disruptive innovators and mediating early-adopters in place to evaluate new technologies. That is what they are really good at and actually enjoy. If they see the value, especially the mediators, they can often speed up the rate the new technology diffuses."

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. ...

If you behave like a disease, people develop an immune system

Psychologen sind ja – meiner bescheidenen Erfahrung und Einsicht nach – stets sehr entspannte, freundliche, fast notorisch optimistische Zeitgenossen. Da macht auch Herr Kruse keine Ausnahme. Seine unverkrampfte, konfliktbefreite Art über die Dinge zu sprechen stellt alleine schon eine Erfrischung dar, wie wir sie alle dringend nötig haben. Wirklich beeindruckend ist aber die Brillanz seiner Analysen.

The intranet can support and assist these efforts at cultural change. The golden rule, however, is this:
Use the intranet to move the organisation forward half a step.
There is limited value in using the intranet to simply reinforce the current corporate culture. Conversely, if the intranet gets too far ahead of where staff are at, there will be considerable difficulty in getting staff to understand and adopt the new functionality.

„Sie wollen Tools, Techniken und Tricks“, sagt Schulz von Thun etwa von den Unternehmensvertretern. Er sagt es mit leiser Ironie in der Stimme, um dann sogleich Verständnis zu zeigen, denn die eigene Professionalität verlange es eben, praktisch einsetzbare Instrumente zu kennen und zu nutzen.

Also es ist jetzt nicht gerade eine Neuigkeit, denn dass die Abschiedsvorlesung von Friedemann Schulz von Thun hier online zugänglich ist, wurde schon auf vielen Blogs verbreitet. Um sich diese ganz anzuhören, muss man aber schon ein bisschen Zeit mitbringen

The Gervais Principle is this:

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

The Gervais principle differs from the Peter Principle, which it superficially resembles. The Peter Principle states that all people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It is based on the assumption that future promotions are based on past performance. The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the “to” level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason.

It’s often remarked that “ignorance is bliss.” However, when you look at ignorance from the perspective of the brain a very different picture emerges. Our brains, and the brains of other animals, have evolved to find information rewarding. In fact, not knowing is stressful, which is why we strive to decrease that uncertainty whenever possible. We want the information and we want it now!

great quotes to thing thru, I agree that overstretching people's comfort zone with Enterprise 2.0 is a hasrd and risky thing to do, yet I think that most often baby steps won't do

Very nice roundup on incentives.

Financial rewards only boost performance on mechanical. When cognitive skills are essential, the have negative influence.

[...] intrinsic rewards are far more effective than extrinsic rewards for motivating creative, innovative behavior. Of course anyone who has run a creative organization has always known this but what Dan will no doubt do is get through to the 99% of leaders running companies who still believe that the carrot and the stick is the right way to promote innovation

Die Clips, die Jan Sentürk aus seinem Online-Gestenkoffer zieht, sind trotzdem lehrreich. Sie helfen uns dabei, körpersprachliche Signale nicht nur wahrzunehmen, sondern auch zu benennen. Und hoffentlich unser Handeln entsprechend auszurichten.

Die Minuten-Filme raten nicht zum manipulativen Einsatz der Körpersprache. Mit Selbstkritik können wir uns aber unser eigenes Verhalten bewusst machen. Vielleicht merke ich, dass ich dominant und nicht partnerschaftlich auftrete. Oder vielleicht weder noch, sondern eher zögernd?

Die Welt besteht aus Optimisten und Pessimisten. Letztlich liegen beide falsch. Aber der Optimist lebt glücklicher.

An extensive article on communication and decison-making, problem-solving and awareness of pressing problems – highlighting some dysfunctional effects that hinder a group (a team, a department, an organisation) to effectively share information. Research references included, too

I recently finished "How We Decide", which tries to answer the question how do people make decisions? Contrary to popular belief, human decisions are rarely -- if ever -- "rational." Almost all of the decision-making-process lies in our "emotional mind."

How can this be? Our minds are incredibly powerful when it comes to reasoning and logic... Why is it not engaged when it comes to making a decision?

In essence, the rational part of our brain is relatively new -- in the evolutionary sense. It is capable of tremendously complex analysis of systems with hundreds of variables and moving parts... for example, should I jump out of the path of a moving car? Yes! However, the rational mind is lousy at "knowing" which variables are important and which aren't... Which direction should I jump? Should I plant my right foot first, or my left? When I land, should I roll to avoid injury? What if I get my shirt dirty?

Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

AI and the 4D-Model are deeply rooted in complexity theory. The underlying principle of simultaneity (change of mind and change of organizations happen at the same time) and the principle of poetry (the story of organizations can be recreated in conversations) relate to a basic systemic process: organizations can not be described as the sum of its parts but only as a whole.

Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

No. The model is a linear one, describing the behavior of individuals on a clearly defined path. However, the cycle of grief can enrich a systemic model of change that tries to explain what actually happens in organizations. So, like a weather model can explain why a thunderstorm happens, Kuebler-Ross' cycle can explain why people do not cooperate in certain stages of the change, particularly when combined with a human needs model such as the one of Manfred Max-Neef that I favor.

What is worrying about this is not Robson’s note: He’s simply doing what most teens (and most adults) do, which is to extrapolate from his own and his friends’ experience to form generalisations about the world around him. It’s a very human thing to do, but the important thing about businesses like Morgan Stanley, and the journalists who write about them, is that they are supposed to be able to tell the difference between data and generalisations. Yet they don’t seem able to sort the wheat from the chaff. It seems yet another symptom of the group-think in the media and financial sector that led to the Great Recession, rather than an indication that we have learned anything from it.

valuable lessons for all who would create or use social software, each backed up with pointers to the social science study about that lesson. Groups breed competition: While co-operation within group members is generally not so much of a problem, co-operation between groups can be hellish. People may be individually co-operative, but once put in a 'them-and-us' situation, rapidly become remarkably adversarial.

Why group norms kill creativity:

Unfortunately groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave. Norms influence what people believe is right and wrong just as surely as real laws, but with none of the permanence or transparency of written regulations…the unwritten rules of the group, therefore, determined what its members considered creative. In effect groups had redefined creativity as conformity.

Drawing on the findings of brain research, they conclude that “our brains use two processes that enable us to cope with the complexities we face: pattern recognition and emotional tagging.” Neither of these is inherently bad, in fact they are quite helpful and necessary much of the time. The problem is when we are faced with new types of input that do not match up with our previous experiences. This most often leads to flawed thinking.

They describe four conditions under which flawed thinking is most likely to happen. The first two are pattern recognition problems and the latter are emotional tagging issues.

short slideshow introduces The Sorcerer’s Seven Powers (formerly The Seven Powers of the Innovation Warrior).

A sorcerer is a practitioner of third generation innovation practice, or Innovation 3.

Poor leadership in good times can be hidden, but poor leadership in bad times is a recipe for disaster. To find out why leaders fail, we scrutinized results from two studies: In one, we collected 360-degree feedback data on more than 450 Fortune 500 executives and then teased out the common characteristics of the 31 who were fired over the next three years. In the second, we analyzed 360-degree feedback data from more than 11,000 leaders and identified the 10% who were considered least effective. We then compared the ineffective leaders with the fired leaders to come up with the 10 most common leadership shortcomings. Every bad leader had at least one, and most had several. The list of worst leaders.

a long article by Sam Anderson on “Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama’s BlackBerry, and the benefits of overstimulation.”

“Free-associative wandering is essential to the creative process; one moment of judicious unmindfulness can inspire thousands of hours of mindfulness.”

“Focus is a paradox—it has distraction built into it. The two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness. Attention comes from the Latin “to stretch out” or “reach toward,” distraction from “to pull apart.” We need both. In their extreme forms, focus and attention may even circle back around and bleed into one other.”

Warum zögern Menschen Entscheidungen zu treffen?

Viel hängt dies mit der Unsicherheit zusammen, die mit einer Entscheidung verbunden ist. Man ist nie ganz sicher ob die Entscheidung richtig war. Und häufig hängt ja auch viel von einer Entscheidung ab. Aber nicht zu entscheiden ist oft auch eine Entscheidung. Nämlich dann, wenn die Entscheidung solang hinausgezögert wird, bis die eine oder andere Alternative obsolet wird. Entscheidungen hinauszuzögern, ist eine schlechte Entscheidung. Wenn die Zeit drängt, werden Entscheidungen in letzter Minute getroffen; Und in nicht zu wenigen Fällen die falschen.

Im zweiten Teil der Serie über Effekte, Phänome und Methoden (Teil 1: Effekte, Teil 3: Methoden) geht es um klassische Alltagsphänome oder überraschende Beobachtungen aus der Psychologie oder Soziologie.

More

In the post, Social search, Help engines, and Sense-making, I explained how microblogging helps with findability and achieves many of the aims of KM.

In the post, Twitter 3 years on, and why it’s the killer app!, I elaborated how it’s different, unique and can combine the power of: IM, forums, RSS Readers, blogs, links blogs, etc…in one tool/network.

Change is frightening to many elements inside the typical organization. Change threatens people’s power, their status, their egos, and, in some situations, even their jobs. Change can make someone’s expertise obsolete and thereby make them obsolete as well. Because people are afraid of change, innovation efforts often cause the eruption of corporate antibodies that fight to kill innovation and maintain the status quo.

The factors that cause angst within a closed system of innovation may prove to be even more threatening when a company shifts toward open innovation. Executives and managers may feel they can control the degree of change and shape it to their own needs as long as everything is happening within the organization. But start to bring outside forces in and it’s a whole new ballgame. One reason is that change related to open innovation impacts the whole company. It is not just driven from R&D or the innovation guys. If you want to succeed in open innovation you have to make ch

Most change programs fail, but the odds of success can be greatly improved by taking into account these counterintuitive insights about how employees interpret their environment and choose to act.

Kollektive Intelligenz ist der Schlüssel zu einer besseren Entscheidung, meint James Surowiecki in seinem Buch Die Weisheit der Vielen – Warum Gruppen klüger sind als Einzelne. Dabei konzentriert sich der Wissenschaftler auf drei Arten von Problemen:
– Kognitionsprobleme, das Finden von Antworten auf Fragestellungen
– Koordinierungsprobleme, das Finden von Möglichkeiten, Verhalten zu koordinieren
– Kooperationsprobleme, das Ermöglichen der Zusammenarbeit von Menschen mit Eigeninteressen

De Bono describes lateral thinking as ‘a habit of mind and an attitude of mind’ which can be fostered by practising specific lateral thinking techniques, such as:

* Challenging assumptions (e.g. by thinking outside the box)
* generating alternatives (even when you have an apparently satisfactory solution)
* suspended judgement
* brainstorming
* analogies
* random stimulation (e.g. by opening a dictionary to find a random word and apply it to the problem)

liegt aber schlicht an den persönlichen Erfahrungen, die ich dort gemacht habe. Und ich glaube, die braucht man auch, um Twitter gut zu finden.

Innovating is hard work. Perhaps the most difficult aspect is dealing with the anxiety that comes with following a systematic innovation method. The process forces innovators to start with uncomfortable, abstract concepts that seem silly and worthless. These are called preinventive concepts because they occur right before the moment of innovating. Successful innovators learn how to deal with and control the anxiety at this critical moment of invention. But there is a catch: some are better at it than others. Fortunately, there is a way to determine if you are more or less anxiety-ridden from these effects.

The trick to great innovation is to construct preinventive structures that have these properties: Novelty, Ambiguity, Meaningfulness, Emergence, Incongruity, Divergence

Executives of large companies including Yahoo are not just smart brains. They have behavior patterns that are relatively predictable, can however easily be masked by smartness, but prevents them from having adequate attitudes, taking critical decisions and developing managerial skills.
How is it possible that with all the education and advices they received, Yahoo executives were lacking clear strategy and could not prevent damaging internal competition? You are right, more is to be addressed … not just in Yahoo, but also on how executives are educated, promoted, managed or searched.

“User generated Content” und “Social Networks” sind zwei prägende Merkmale des sogenannten Web 2.0. Äußerst spannende Merkmale, die auf aktive Handlungen der Lernenden in sozialen Kontexten hinweisen. Lassen sich diese Merkmale mit Handlungen im realen Raum verknüpfen und wären die Online-Werkzeuge tatsächlich intuitiv, zuverlässig und leicht verfügbar, dann ließe sich hier möglicherweise die Innovations-Bremse des E-Learnings lösen. Vielleicht könnte man sogar ganz auf den Begriff E-Learning verzichten, weil damit noch immer viele das unsägliche Instruktionsdesign verbinden, das wohl eher für Rückschritt steht denn für Innovation.

From the reality of working in an “average” business environment the challenges that have to be addressed to make blogging work might look like too much trouble to deal with. Before that scares you, it is important to take into account that they also reflect some of the broader shifts in the nature of work, so embracing them as a result of blogging might help preparing for those.

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Topics covered include:

* What makes creative people tick
* Why motivation is crucial to creative success
* Why you can’t motivate anybody - but what you can do instead
* What Iggy Pop can teach you about management
* Why offering rewards can harm creative performance
* How to write 47 novels before breakfast
* Why some people seem so weird - and how to deal with them
* The positive side of peer pressure