Getting Clever Together » Creativity

Failure and Collaborative Intelligence

Stephen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:44:31 +0000

“Being frightened of being wrong” is how Ken Robinson describes one of our most challenging hang-overs from our ‘education’. I remember well the class room pressure to be ‘right’ even to this day and I left school…umm.. a few years ago. Intuitively we know that being wrong is part of life and that, on reflection, failure is a lot more informative than success. All great sports performers know that one of the chief benefits of practice is the opportunity to ’safely fail’.

The value of failing forwards has not been lost on scientists and explorers down through the centuries either. Just about every advance in science and art was integrally linked to ‘failure’. The ink leached, the wrong number was used, a mistake was made reading the map. Then something new was discovered.

Teaching our kids the value of doubt, the power of uncertainty and the learning and value of failure will enable them to be more creative and less bound by the known. This openness in long run will also enable them to grow up and become adults that seek out collaboration rather than compete to see who can be the ‘most right’.

Collaboration – Can We Own Knowledge?

Stephen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:03:07 +0000

Our society is fast outstripping it’s ability to keep up with the production of knowledge and information. The Creative Commons sprang from the urge to make and create with a modified concept of ‘ownership’. Extremely successful in the creation of software and in the early days most notably the operating system ‘Linux’. The CC licencing approach has moved into the arts, novels, plays and non-fiction business books (my own book ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch’ as an example). This movie is a beautiful (even mesmerizing) piece of art that is shared with you courtesy of a Creative Commons Licence.

Sharing what we know vigorously might is the only we can move our society forward – patent lawyers will only make the ‘commons’ impoverished while benefiting a small percentage of the population. People have to be able to benefit from what they produce and I believe the Creative Commons is a great solution to this dilemma.

I’ve ranted before about how bacteria are outsmarting us because they are more ‘collaborative’ with their information. I also realize our society is much more complex than that of a colony of Ecoli – however the question remains – how can we become more like Ecoli with it’s amazing adaptability and resilience?

A World Transforming : Collaboration Must Have Something To Do With It?

Stephen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:28:56 +0000

The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a wonderful resource with a huge storehouse of ideas from some of the brightest minds alive. Recently they released a special report : ‘The Shift 2007 Report- Evidence of a World Transforming’. This report explores where our planet is going and is a great source of hope about our species. The morning newspaper typically gives us all sorts of reasons for losing hope. The ‘Shift Report’ does quite the opposite. In the section entitled ‘Business: The Conscious Workplace’ a particular quote stood out for me.

“Business enterprises – by virtue of their access to resources, their flexibility, and their willingness to innovate – may be able to respond more creatively than any other institution to the opportunities present ina world in transition” (The Narings Liv Project – 2007)