Archive for October, 2008

Posted on October 5, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic on Collaboration Tools

Let’s set the stage for what will be discussed here:

First of all what are we defining as collaboration tools? Any model or piece of software, especially web based, that helps to guide interactive design between two or more people. As web technology takes the lime light over the next couple of years, we will be looking for insights on tool products, companies, concepts that help to facilitate – not just getting projects done – but improving the human engagement. I look forward to seeing lots of interaction and input from not only those who are making tools, but those of you who want to use them.

What is needed functionally in the tools and why? Where does each tool best apply to brainstorming, vision-creating, decision-making, strategizing, proposing, and so on? How does human behavior relate to tool design and use?

See where I’m going here?

So jump into this conversation and let’s build this blog into an awesome set of sources for learning how to collaborate together – in a world that so much needs healthier ways for communicating and innovating with each other. Ways that make our planet a place where our children and our children’s children will want to be.

Posted on October 5, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic on Creative Learning

Let’s set the stage for what will be discussed here:

What does this subject have to do with anything outside of a school environment? Well allow me to elaborate …

The world has changed. Noooo, the world is not ‘about’ to change, it HAS changed. And the way we learn no longer fits into the slot of go-to-school, get a degree, then go apply what we learned. No, learning has become a frequent set of feedback loops that are built directly into real experience. So, there is no longer time to go to school and get ‘educated’ (so to speak). Thus, this part of my sustainable innovation blog is dedicated to the new ways we humans are learning. It directly links to collaborative processes, to sustainability, and is critical to developing what I call ‘next generation innovation’.

This next generation forms of innovation carry a much bigger stick in terms of what kind of knowledge capital is embedded into it. Larger questions are asked about the outcome of NGI that is inherently guiding its evolution and manifestation. So join me in this journey by jumping in, being willing to make mistakes, and staying open to other people’s views so that we can find potentially better ways for us to learn together as a now global community.

Posted on October 6, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic on Keepin’ it Green – the Color of “Sustainable Innovation”

As most of you who clicked into this space: green is no longer a do-good concept. No, in fact it has become a manditory part of defining any business, any organization, any city … really anything that we humans have the ability to think about and create will forever be different because of the green movement and its identity with how we manage our home  – that big round house we call Earth and all the living communities that inhabit it.

Green for me, goes beyond the idea of ‘environment’. In fact, I find that most talk about the environment often separates us two-leggers with big brains; as if we lived in the environment but were not apart of it. This is a wakeup call: We are “THAT”. And this means that how we address green has to address our interconnectedness with anything that we normally discuss as if its something outside of ourselves.

So, in this section of the blog, we will be having conversations about green as essential to the way we see ourselves. From that we create what we need and what we want. This is called innovation from my view. So as we move into what many believe is a critical period in determining the future of human-kind, we will talk about things that address green (or sustainability) as a catalyst for creating next-generation innovation. This is why we have set the primary theme of this blog as ’sustainable innovation’. Join me on this journey. Give me some feedback.

Posted on October 6, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic on Team Building

Allow me to set the context for this section of my blog.

For me, team building is a highly important aspect of any organization’s development. Very few of you will argue me that.

However, I propose that it is rare to see team building as a process that is directly integrated into the work that needs to get done. Instead, team building is done using separate programs, like climbing trees together, or goofy games that create bonding. Yeah, it does that to an extent. But there is nothing better than a team that builds itself amidst the project they are working on – and doing that consciously together.

Now ‘that’ is the best way to build teams in my view.

It is a method that I emphasize strongly during the discovery process as I believe it is the way to fuel deeper forms of innovation. When team building is separate from the work at hand, it is harder to relate what happened when you were hanging 100 feet in the air from a rope when – back at the company – a statement is made by someone that just doesn’t make sense. How do you team with that?

Integrate team building with your project and get better more sustained results. Then go out and have some fun outside of the workplace together.

Posted on October 27, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic on Sustainable Innovation

I have long awaited the day when business and technology begin to use principles of sustainability as the foundation for creating and using products and services. Well, the future has arrived and I’m all over it.

Under concepts like ‘triple bottom line’ and ’social responsibility’ the idea of innovation is showing up in new ways. Thus, I will be spending ample time discussing these kinds of concepts and looking at how their use in day-to-day development within your company will dramatically improve not only your production but also your companies attractiveness to potential clients and investors.

All of us carry underlying beliefs that drive the creative process, and today’s view of innovation carries many assumptions. Unfortunately, these assumption lead to dangerous results because the correct “checks and balances” have not been implemented. Because of this, it is now essential that we use a broader perspective when creating and assessing various forms of innovation.

One idea is to blend three different concepts of innovation into one; Social innovation, organizational innovation, and technical innovation. Each of these carry their own individual ability to create cool stuff. Yet, when actively used together during an innovation process as a sort of “3-lens perspective” your outcomes are kept in check and actually pushes you beyond your present level. Furthermore, it will help you to make better decisions for your company and for the planet. Using this 3-lens perspective, you will be able to track and monitor improved efficiency of the solutions or outcome you create.

So stick with me on this one. Let’s dive in with both feet and talk about this thing called ’sustainable innovation’. I want you to ask questions and address some of your greatest fears, concerns … and, yes, potential opportunities that you think can arise by jumping into this new form of innovative process. Are you in?

Posted on October 27, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Vic’s “Be The Change!” Twibes Twitter Postings

Vic’s “Be The Change!” Twibes Twitter Postings

Join the group

Learn more about Discovery Fuel’s “Be The Change!” Project

Posted on October 30, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Insights on Team Identity and Self Expression

This is a real experience relating to my own personal authenticty awarenesss and development. I encourage you to do the same. Below are insights from John Voris of Authentic Systems after a healthy discussion on personal development and team building. Go ahead and listen in…

—

“Vic,  It was a pleasure talking with you. We have a great deal in common.

In the beginning, you seemed concerned with being boxed in and I hope that feeling lessened by the end of our conversation.  While we don’t like being labeled, we actually spend our entire life ensuring that we are. Individuality is not a state of doing in the sense of achievement but rather a way of life. It is how we pursue our desires. Liberty requires the freedom to choose the conditions in which to aspire toward our goals. Choosing our own direction makes our identity our own freely chosen.  Autonomy ensures self-development and cultivation of our faculties in the hopes of finding the best direction for full expression.

This self-direction finds structure by us always heading toward fulfilling our satisfaction of wants and desires and these passions are again structured in abeyance to the living design of our choices, heading toward our individual interpretation of what is fulfillment. The model of self is always imploding and feeding off itself.  Our identity finds definition in moral orientation that exists beneath the culturally imposed topography of self (Synthetic). We frame our inner self (Authentic) within a universally valid commitment and it is this commitment that generates our external manifestation.

If we were to lose this sense of orientation we would not know who we are. It is this linguistically transcending orientation that defines where you answer from when asked “Who are you?”. It is an abstract feeling that attaches to physicality of language. Our orientation is in this moral space–the  ontological basis to self. That is, to say that your Authentic Motivator is “Spiritual Connection” is a symbolic simulation at best.

To cultivate the “self” is to cultivate a “way of being” that has form. Even to say that all is relative and absolutes do not exist is still a “way of being.” Freedom is the willingness to be self-shackled.

I thought you might enjoy some additional thoughts on the subject.”

If you’d like to know what truely motivates you at your core, as well as what’s stoping you from achieving your goals, take John’s Authentic Identity Assessment and learn the truth about…you.