Innovation is not guaranteed to work, if it were then it would not be novel enough to be termed “innovation”. So there is a risk involved. However, presumably, we would like our innovative efforts to work (that is, to pay out) some of the time, otherwise they would not be worth the price.

#c4cc2012 event

During a flow of Twitter messages about an event today (2012.01.24) at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, there was an exchange of messages in which Benjamin Ellis (@BenjaminEllis) suggested that paying the price of innovation is the opposite of paying an insurance premium. The message is here. Benjamin called it an innovation premium.

It is a gamble

Well, the opposite of an insurance premium is a bet. The model is the same: you pay a small price, in the expectation of getting a bigger payout if an event occurs. The difference is that: in the case of an insurance premium, you (probably) hope that the event does not happen; whereas, in the case of a bet, you hope that it does.

So it seems that innovation is equivalent to gambling. Of course, one can consider and analyse the various risks involved, and can work to minimise the downside. But in the end, in innovation, as in gambling:

You’ve got to be in it to win it!

You and I like different things. Also you and I like or dislike the same things for different reasons and to a different extent.

A significant hurdle to understanding this is the difficulty we frequently have in accepting that other people have different perspectives from which they view the same things as we view.

Yet, we know that we all have different experiences and capabilities, and different hopes and fears; so is it a surprise that we have different criteria by which we observe, assess and evaluate anything? This is the basis for variety and diversity. It is also fundamental to trade and commerce; if everyone’s valuation of an item is the same, then there is no basis for trading it.

So if we have any blind spots which hide differences between our valuations, these can have wide ranging consequences for our ability to cooperate and interoperate. They limit our capacity to assist each other and to enable each other to contribute as effectively as we might.

Our existence would be extremely limited if we all liked the same.

Are you falling asleep or waking up, or both, at odd times after zipping westward or, often worse, eastward across time zones?

Many people do and having a model for the workings of sleep can provide a basis for deciding what to do.

Sleeping and waking

The model that I use is based on the guideline that, for each hour that we sleep, we store up two hours of wakefulness. This makes approximate sense as people who are getting enough sleep are asleep for about 8 hours and awake for about 16 hours per day.

Also, another guideline is that we can only store a maximum of 16 hours of wakefulness. So if we start at zero wakefulness, e.g at the end of a normal day, we can sleep for only about 8 hours, then we wake up. We cannot sleep longer than normal in an attempt to store more wakefulness and, therefore, to stay awake for longer than about 16 hours without becoming tired.

However, of course, we can stay awake for longer periods, in which case we can go into negative wakefulness, also known as “sleep deficit”. In that case, we can sleep for longer to catch up; and we need to sleep for longer to get back into positive stored wakefulness.

Dealing with “jet lag”

On this basis, one way to try to deal with jet lag is to start by calculating how much wakefulness you have stored now. This can be done by knowing what state you were in at some reference time in the past, and calculating how much time has elapsed since then, and how much sleep you have had during that time.

Then, based on how much wakefulness you need to have stored to be in a normal state at some future time (perhaps 24 hours from now, or perhaps at your normal bedtime today or tomorrow), you can calculate how much sleep you need between now and then to get back into synch.

One of the difficulties is that the body gets into a habit of sleeping for a constant length of time and then waking up. So when trying to deal with jet lag, some people sleep for too long and therefore take longer to get back into synch. So if you calculate that you need to sleep for less time then you normally sleep, you need an alarm clock or someone to wake you up. On the other hand, if you calculate that you need to sleep for longer than you normally sleep and are waking up to soon, then you might need to do it in two separate periods of sleep, with a (shorter than normal) gap between.

I hope that this makes some sense to you.

There’s more …

By the way, if you are interested, there is additional complexity to this and many people believe that it is important to have your eyes open in daylight for enough time at the right times in the sleep cycle. This makes some sense, as the outer layer of photo-sensitive cells in our retinas die during sleep and are discarded to expose a new outer layer on each sleep cycle. Further indication of this is that I have heard, but not confirmed, that: blind people do not get jet lag. If so, that is fascinating!

Background

I originally wrote this for someone who reported that they were suffering from jet lag; and I’m posting it here because someone else is reporting similar suffering, and it might be of some use of other people too.

Of course, as an amateur at this, I must point out that this is not medical advice and you must take responsibility for your own bedtimes! Also the following is not a description that I have developed or have scientifically researched, it is however a model that I learnt about during the human factors part of my flying training. If you are “jet lagged” and have stayed awake long enough to read this, I hope that you find it helpful.

Mankind has evolved through the application of small thoughts which continually make a difference to someone and big ideas which occasionally rock everyone’s world. There is always an opportunity to innovate in specific ways, but now something else is happening at a generic level.

Innovation is an opportunity now: not because we have access to many new technologies; not because we face major challenges; and not because the pace of change is increasing. These have been true during many periods of history.

Innovation is an opportunity now because the world is beginning to understand that innovation can be managed. This has been understood by some people for some time; yet, for most people, the concept of managing innovation remains out of reach.

We have the opportunity to do new things more effectively through the application of our understanding of innovation. The opportunity is to be more innovative, and we are still learning what that means.

[This post was originally written in connection with my contribution to the Like Minds 2011 conference in Exeter, UK between October 19-21, and was published in the conference magazine for the Apple iPad, see the AppStore under "Like Minds" .]

Marching up the slope ahead of us makes sense as an effective way to move onwards and upwards, until we reach the summit. But the summit of what? Most likely it is not the summit, it is just a summit.

There are other summits, and many of them are higher than this summit. Now what?

Discontinuous improvement is called for, to transition across the valley or chasm to the slope of our next, higher challenge. With sufficient resources and expertise, we might be able to build bridge or swing or, even, fly across. Without them, we must commit to descending into the valley.

Or, of course, we could just stay where we are at the top of our little summit.

The questions about innovation are not about why we innovate or whether to innovate. They are about what, when, where and how we innovate.

How often have you heard that every problem is an opportunity? Is this true?

So what is the difference between a problem and an opportunity?

Opportunities and problems are opposites.

Usually, we do things because we can see the benefit of doing them.

A problem exists when we see a benefit, but we are not able to generate it.

An opportunity exists when there are things that we are able to do, but we have not yet seen the benefit of doing them.

Whether or not we can turn every problem into an opportunity, we can focus less on problems and focus more on opportunities.

When we have a problem, we focus on the benefits that we cannot generate:

•  we do not know what things to do to generate the benefit
•  we know what things to do, but do not know how to do them,
•  we know how to do them, but are not able to do them.

When we have an opportunity, we focus on benefits that we can generate.

How can we look for opportunities?

We can relax about the things that we are not able to do, and focus on the things that we are able to do.

We can relax about the benefits that we are not able to generate and focus on benefits that we are able to generate.

Is this an opportunity for us all?

It’s wonderful when you can, because you don’t need to remember anything. You can play around and improvise on a whim. It’s fun, interesting and might lead anywhere; and if the things that trigger those thoughts are well organised, then it is likely to lead somewhere.

On the other hand, it might lead nowhere. And what are you doing about your thoughts on the things that you are not doing and cannot do now; these start to build up.

Also, always doing things when we first think of them is a habit which can generate the converse effect. We wait until we are doing something before we think about what to do. If so, our actions and decisions are likely to be based on limited information because little or no preparation has been done.

People for whom mistakes can be expensive have developed sayings to counter this. For example, carpenters say: “think three times, measure twice, and cut once” and pilots say: “plan the flight, and fly the plan.”

In other words: “do now, but think sooner”!

By collecting our thoughts and putting them in places where we can use them later, and by gathering information and thinking about it in advance of using it, we are building up a picture of the way forward. This makes it more likely that, when the time comes, we will do the right things and makes doing those things much easier.  [Disclosure: yes, I am a fan of “GTD”!]

So “do now, but think sooner” also means “think now, do later” … assuming that you capture those thoughts.

This customer was calling because he wanted to take his business system home!

His system is used by multiple users to run his business; it was supplied and is supported by this company. He wanted to shut down the computer at his business premises, disconnect it, put it in his car and take it to his home.

Why? Riots, that is why! In the last few days, there have been riots on the streets of several cities in England and this customer was concerned for the safety of his system.

Despite this being a most unusual request, the customer was being given clear descriptions of a variety of issues, the procedures involved in dealing with them, and the remote technical help that could be provided. But the support engineer was lacing his advice with gentle suggestions that this whole exercise was not generally a good idea.

As background information was retrieved by the engineer, it was revealing that this particular customer’s general-purpose PC-style computer had been supplied over six years earlier and had not been shut down for over a year; now the gentle discouragement was turning into firmer dissuasion from this course of action. The customer was told about various risks due to the expected quantities of dust in the machine and the fragility of electrical connections and the likelihood that his computer would fail to start up again.

By the time the call had finished, other people had already looked up maps of the recent street riots in England and the relative location of the customer’s premises, which revealed that it was, indeed, in amongst it all. But by now the technical support person’s description to his colleagues of the inadvisability of this action took on a rather more colourful complexion! He rapidly generated images of the effects on the internals of this computer as gorillas manhandled it, bashed it into walls and then it bumped along in the back of someone’s car! He had no difficulty in imagining fragile connections breaking, blankets of dust moving about in there, the internals of hard disks being upset, and he did not like it at all. He made clear his opinion that damage by the customer was guaranteed, but damage by rioters was not, and the customer should leave the **** computer where it is, and leave it running! He was already working out when to expect the call for help to shutdown the system and when he would need to deal with consequently failed system. I was half expecting him to start preparing an order for a replacement system and scheduling a visit to install it!

You might not be surprised that my thoughts were that this was yet another example of the advantages of providing these computer systems using “cloud” based services, and how the disadvantages of this approach continue to be perceived as major obstacles for many people. But, more on that on another occasion.

As it happens no call for assistance with the shutdown was received before the end of business day, and the support engineer drew the conclusion that the customer had opted to take the advice given and leave his system alone. Let’s hope that the rioters also left his premises and computer system alone too.

“Do words mean the same to say as to hear?”

Much of this subject is, I believe, quite well understood by people involved in communication theory and, particularly, in organizational communication.

There are experts on this subject: the person from whom I have learnt most of the following is Alan Nelson, when he explained the essentials of organizational communication, during an interview.

Meaning and context

If I say or write some words, then I do so in my context which represents my view of the universe, including my understanding of the subject area or lack of it, my language skills or lack of them, etc.. The meaning that I wish to convey, complete with all of its innuendos, caused me to select those words based on that context.

When you hear or read those words (assuming that they are transferred accurately from me to you), you attribute meaning to them in your context. Whether the meaning that you attribute to the content of the message is the same as the meaning that I intended when I generated the message (assuming accurate transmission) depends on the alignment of our contexts.

Alignment of contexts

The alignment of our contexts depends on a very wide range of factors including, in this case, on our speaking the same “language”, in the most general sense. It also depends on our shared knowledge of history, in the longer term. And it depends on our shared understanding of what we are talking about, in the shorter term.

The degree of longer term alignment depends on a range of factors, many which precede this communication. But the alignment of the shorter term factors depend on the preceding content of the conversation in which the message is transferred, including any previous agreements or disagreements about what we wish or intend to be talking about.

Channels of communication

To break this down, consider a simple example. If I say to you: “yes”; what does it mean? Of course, it depends on what you said or did before that, and our shared understanding that we are talking in English. In other words, all communication occurs in a conversation. We can build up all the rest of it from there. As I understand it, the communication theorists incorporate much more about channels with different levels of richness, depending on their bandwidth and the opportunity for interaction, etc..

There is a lot more to this than that, but that is probably plenty to provide a context in which to answer your question . [There you go: what did "this" and "that" and mean?!]

And there’s more …

It is probably worth pointing out, however, that this has very little to do with words. In various situations, if one person nods their head or switches on a red light or sends any signal, then another person who receives that signal (or part of it, or a distorted version of it) is likely to attribute a meaning to the received signal, including recognising that there are multiple ambiguous meanings. 

So the short answer is “no!”

In general, the probability that the attributed meaning is identical in all respects to the intended meaning is zero. But the probability that a sufficient proportion of the intended meaning has been transferred is greater: for simpler messages; when the communication channel is rich enough for the purpose; and when the contexts, in both the long and the short term, of the communicating parties are aligned.

I’d be grateful for any feedback from people who know about communication, in general, and organizational communcation, in particular.

As I begin to use it, it feels like facebook, which is quite limited.
And it’s nowhere near as useful as Twitter.

No doubt, the guys who design these services
are thinking about what they are trying to achieve.
They are almost certainly thinking about the features of the service;
they are probably thinking about its behaviour;
and they might be thinking about the experience of using it.

But goodness knows whether they are thinking at all about
the communication models which are supported by the service that they end up generating.

It seems to me that if they did, instead of struggling with the details,
they’d be figuring out new ways to enable people
to hold and manage peer-to-peer conversations on the basis of asymmetric relationships,
both at the level of individuals and of groups/lists/circles/huddles/<roll your own>.

A current irony, for me, is that the most interesting conversation I’m having is on facebook with someone with whom I have no connection/friendship/followship/<any other link>.

How is that possible? I have no idea; but we might as well be using email!!