Tag Archives: Tools

Accelerating Innovation

The following TED talk delivered by Bill Gates speaks of his one wish to halve the cost of energy while simultaneously reducing carbon output from the production of energy to zero. He speaks of energy miracles and explains his preference for a particular miracle he favours.

I started to wipe the sweat from my brow. I don’t have to do this “Save the World” thing. Someone else is about to do it. Not only that, it’s  Bill Gates. He has a track record of performing miracles.  He has more resources at his disposal than any other individual on the planet. This will get done.

Then again, if you take note of what Bill has to say 15:20 -> 17:00 into his talk about the 2020 report card. He realises his punt on a miracle may be wrong. To reduce risk, others must also take a punt. We must accelerate innovation in all realms and even he doesn’t have the resources to back all of it.

His releasing fireflies into the audience indicated that we need to think about all ideas as it’s ideas where innovation comes from.

Only a small proportion of the global population regard their individual role as one of Research and Development, yet it’s Research and Development that we hold responsible for innovation. Bill Gates pleads for Government direct investment and incentives for R & D and yet delivery mechanisms will only deliver investment to a small portion of potential innovators.  This is conventional wisdom and doesn’t look outside the box.

Perhaps changing the system of innovation to increase individual participation is the way of meeting our new world goals. Not surprisingly, this smacks of Open Source Philosophy and hence not mentioned in his speech.  What is mentioned in the Question and Answer session at he end of the Talk with Chris Anderson is Bills inability to share detail due to the conventional wisdom of non-disclosure agreements.

At this point I remember that Kahatika is a way of having your cake and eating it too.

More Video Talks I like

As I pick up links offered through people I follow on twitter I find more and more stuff related to what I’m trying to do with Kahatika and my efforts to “Save the World”.  I busily place talks in my favourites list on TED, Youtube and the likes to try and stay organised. Am I going to remember why they are related to Kahatika?  I had better put them in my Blog and write what struck me as interesting before I forget.

Jonathan Zittrain offers a bunch of questions on the start of a problem in the video talk above. It caused me to ponder on the changing nature of trust relationships. I ran all concepts of Kahatika through the questions he raises and was content that in one way or another I had addressed them all. Perhaps crowd sourced problem solving techniques are more appropriate in closed networks where trust regarding true purpose can be verified and earned.

The following talk by Dr. Robert Sapolsky on, the Uniqueness of Humans, reinforced concepts within Kahatika on reward mechanisms. From a neurological perspective, it dovetails nicely into Edwards Deming’s ideas on the failings of compensation methods of western industry. Kahatika was born from ideas I gleaned from attending workshops on Deming principles. The last minute of Sapolsky’s talk provides inspiration to act. Whilst geared towards a group of successful academics, we all can take heart from his words.

Practical use of the Human Spirit

Sherwin Nuland speaks of hope and the indomitable “Human Spirit”.  About half way through he makes the statement “The world will not be saved by the internet, it will be saved by the human spirit”. This is as true now as the day the first humans learned to draw, the printing press was invented, and the first telephone conversation took place.

At the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev’s Human Spirit was what “Saved the World”. However, without the technology of Radio, the message that he was ordering the pull out of missiles from Cuba it would never have been delivered fast enough to have had any practical effect.

Without Tesla and Marconi I may not be here to write this blog. This all goes to show that we all have our part to play and communication is the key.

What motivates you?

The following is a TED talk by Dan Pink.  Sixty years ago Edward Deming understood the strange counter-intuitive results of experiment Dan explains and railed against the motivational techniques being used in business. Are we finally coming of Age?

Twelve and a half minutes minutes in he speaks of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

The business tools to to help proceed down this new path are being invented now.

Kahatika is that tool.