Building a business or two!

I've been out of the blogging world for a while - over a year! During this time I have worked a lot, learnt a lot and come a long way in building some successful business ventures. This has been an interesting transition from academic research to commercialisation of this work. I think there are som einteresting stories to tell and lessons to learn from this and I hope to share some of these over the coming weeks and months. Have to get back to the lab now to make some more reagents that we are using in our new invention... more later.

Observation

Observation is something we all know about. It's just looking at stuff - right? Well only kind of right, there are different ways of observing and tricks that you can use to make your observations more effective in the context of entrepeneurship.
Let's first consider that to be an effective observer, in this context, one needs to empathise with the people/situation under scrutiny.
An obvious way to build empathy into the process is to become like the people you are observing (going native) - this is an approach that is used widely and requires a high degree of dedication and often time.
Next down the list is moderate participant observation with the researcher observing and participating in some actions - kind of like work shadowing where people know that you are a visitor. This would be a practical approach to participation where you don't have the time and / or resources to fully submerge yourself.
Passive participation is also useful, where you are present at the scene but do not engage with those that you are observing (people watching). This is particularly useful as one does not necessarily need the permission or cooperation of those being observed.
Of course you can go to another level of detachment where you are not even present at the scence, e.g. watching film footage or reading about behaviour in certain situations.
Sometimes it helps to codify the observation process by preparing a list of categories under which the observations can be logged, e.g. space, time, objects, actions etc
You can do this yourself by sitting in a public place (cafe, pub, shopping center) and making observations based on (your) pre-determined guidelines. Do this for quite a while (couple of hours?) then review your field notes and try to come up with ideas for new services or products that are inspired by this process. Be careful not to concentrate just on extraordinary events - sometimes the interesting stuff can be found in the mundane.

Keep having fun!

Improvisation

The use of improvisation in idea generation can be somewhat of a cliche. However, used properly it can add to the toolbox that one uses to stimulate novel ways of thinking. The process is simple - make stuff up! Having said that, it can be a daunting experience if you have not done that sort of thing before. Certain constructs can be used to assist by providing a framework within which to work - there are loads of ideas that can be found using search engines. One good resource is http://improvencyclopedia.org/ where the glossary is particularly useful in explaining concepts. I am not an expert in this field but find it interesting and will be exploring more of these concepts over the coming weeks and months.

In the next post we explore the role of observation in the creative process - we will then think about how play, improvisation and observation can be combined in a useful way.

Keep having fun!

Play and creativity

I have been interested for some time in the importance of play and playfulness in the creative process. In particular how this relates to scientific and technological innovation. It is clear that, in everyday life there are often (real or perceived) reasons and time constraints that prevent us from incorporating play into our day. Many organizations that are innovative use play within the work day to good effect and many of us could benefit from this approach.

There are different types of play which we will not go into in detail here; for example socio-dramatic play (enactment of real and potential experiences) or communication play (singing, debate, poetry).
Take some time to think of ways that you and your organization/team/family could incorporate play into your everyday lives. When related to innovation it is also important to be observant and to recognize opportunity when it arises. As part of a group try to build on the ideas of others and to modify your feedback (positive or negative) depending on the context of the play.

One idea could be to pretend you are a customer that has a magic order book with which you can order whatever you like whether it exists or not (preferably not!), other players then come up with a more detailed description of how the product works, what the advantages are over previous versions, how it is made etc…

Have fun!