The Culture of Digital Tribes

Education xChange

Design Thinking Conference at the U-M Ross School of Business 

January 23, 2015

This one day event was organized jointly by U-M with local tech companies actively presenting and showing demos. Assessment, Technology vs Instructional Design, Games for Education, and K-12 education were themes visible throughout the talks. 

The keynote highlighted Google’s past, present, and future with education. The case of a geography teacher from Grand Rapids visiting CERN in Switzerland, and doing a Google hangout with his class while in the CERN reactor, as he biked along the accelerator was an impressive idea. It highlighted Google’s commitment to 10X improvements, not small incremental improvements in technology available to the masses. Speakers were Michigan alumni, working at Google. U-M faculty like Barry Fishman and Perry Samson presented and/or participated in panels on improving education. I learnt that Dr. Fishman (School of Ed) led President Obama’s digital education initiative planning team. Nice.

Smart people know that most projects and change initiatives have the odds against them. This is known by worldwide project failure rates of about 60% and about 90% in clinical and translational research. 

Hence, it's a safer bet for stakeholders, to bet against projects. Whether it's opposition parties or entrenched doubting stakeholders, it is personally profitable to bet on failure, rather than betting on success - as it does involve staking one's reputation.

Failure of the project, being more likely, keeps the average stakeholder in the position to say, haha, I told you so.

Success on the other hand, gives them an opportunity to claim they helped with risk management by exposing key issues, when in fact, they were not providing any helpful criticism. 

Friend: Why can't you find a job in the automotive sector in Detroit?

Me: Because, my visa is "exempt", i.e. I can transfer my permit to not-for-profit employers only.

Sherlock Meets Slapstick, AC Doyle turns in his grave.

Genius is found at the intersection of different domains, someone wise from the recent past has stated. When creating a successful and engaging identity, nothing is more creative than mashing up contrasting genres.

Jim Carrey does it brilliantly in Ace Ventura: Sherlock Holms + his  own brand of physical comedy. 

Recently one of my favorite clients was struggling with writing a About paragraph for her Facebook business page and needed motivation. I decided to use storytelling to motivate her to come up with a compelling paragraph:

“Imagine you are unloading your groceries and your two kids are bawling in their car seats as you hurriedly ferry the bags between your home and the car. A neighbor who knows a little bit about your services, interrupts your anxious task. She mentions that she has a party coming up and was looking for help with the themed decoration. She wants to know what you do, without taking too much of your time. You want to excuse yourself and get back to her as soon as you’re settled in, but she is off shopping herself. What do you tell her in a minute?”

This is, of course a variation on the theme, “elevator pitch” that angel investors like to hear first and and prospective customers would want to know at first contact.

Peter Senge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School...

Peter Senge - Society for Organizational Learning

Peter M. Senge, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Founding Chair of SoL, the Society ...

A summary of Senge's famous book- The Fifth Discipline

Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline is divided into five parts. Part I is devoted to laying out the argument that we are the creators of o...

Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline is divided into five parts. Part I is devoted to laying out the argument that we are the creators of our own reality, i.e., that the solutions to the problems that we face are at our reach, that we have the power to control our destinies. 

Full book summary:

Balance: The line between things, apparently similar, but could spin into a spiral of creation or death over the long term

Rainforest: glenneroo @ flickr