| ThoughtBites COMBO August/SEPTEMBER 2017 Remember the basis of Adventurous Thinking ? It is Einstein's pivotal observation that "Imagination is greater than knowledge...for knowledge is limited..wheras imagination ..stimulates progress (and) gives birth to evolution". So thinking outside your expert (knowledge-based) brain. Sending humans to the moon is one great example but check out this 1930's illustration of a fantasy future (below). Look familiar? Click for 7 more SCI FI pics that became truth August and September was particularly inspired months thanks to the LEAN Products conference, continued work at NASA, Burning Man and the debut of my keynote Curiosity=Innovation. Stay tuned for a series of blogs on adding value with innovative thinking using my newly learned LEAN findings. My next Stanford weekend workshop runs December 9&10 and will welcome a group of Columbian entrepreneurs attending with an innovation colleague of mine. Details here. Meanwhile - on with the Adventurous Thinking Five Lens case studies! As my friend Tom Matano says, stay inspired! Sally Dominguez Multifarian, Curious Provocateur Negative Space: Shrooms n Solar For struggling farmers in Japan a double crop: one harvested every day and one seasonal. This new business model has farms producing energy as well as food crops for maximum productivity and return. The solar panels provide the shade and warmth that helps the mushrooms thrive. Imagine this model rolled out worldwide as a space-saving cross-production norm. Read More Here Still on my favorite topic of fungi, did you know that Fungi, specifically mycorrhizal fungi , are the internet of the plant world instrumental in transferring nutrients and carbon between plants? The Negative Space here is what we don't know, what we don't hear, what we are unaware of or only just discovering about this entire communications ecosystem. Suzanne Simard's TED talk "How Trees Talk To Each Other" is riveting and revelatory and SHOULD help us optimize and reimagine forestry practices. Meanwhile this awe-inspiring LIFE diagram from U.of Texas is worth digesting. We are there in tiny writing at top left. Thinking Sideways: Nourishing with Music In my Workshops when we talk about building an innovation scaffold (What John Cleese calls a "Tortoise enclosure" ) music is an important part of productivity and wellbeing. Research on surgeons suggests that playing music you are familiar with helps perform known tasks with more accuracy (luckily for the test patients!) but listening to music when you are trying to learn something new is actually unhelpful. This link is great article on how happy music literally improves mental & physical health. Thinking Backwards: Eversion Biomimicry - the application of plant and animal characteristics to human creations - is a fascinating exploration. Many bio-inspired robots have captured various ways of moving: Cheetbot runs like a cheetah, DARPA has a pack-carrying Dogbot and Snakebots may be the slithering answer to exploring unstable structures in disaster areas. Now for something totally different - Stanford researchers have examined how vines grow and developed a new exploratory bot using inflated tube and the concept of eversion (turning insideout) to create a bot whose base stays motionless while the tip extends and responds to to obstacles in its way. Although inflated, this bot does not puncture due to the way it moves, giving it relevance in disaster exploration in all environments. See the story and watch this incredible thing "grow" here. ReThinking: Flat Pack Pasta with Twist ReThinking is understanding the core value of an offering, and then representing it in a new way. That could mean finding a new customer or scaling it up or down. For MIT student Lining Yao it meant considering traditional pasta as something that could package flat, saving 2/3 of conventional pasta packaging, and then form its shape with heat and water. Check out the very artsy video here and Popsci feature here. Parkour: in Healthcare & Education Last week an Adventurous Thinking Alumni introduced me to an incredible innovator, healthcare thoughtleader Maureen Bisognano , who has been successfully inverting norms in healthcare for decades. Check out her with with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and stay tuned for an interview with Maureen who is constantly looking outside of her area of expertise to find best practice systems and new ways of doing. If you see her on a speaker's list - go! Meanwhile here is an article I wrote early this year on disrupting plagiarism in the classroom. “If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.” -Jules Winnfield from PULP FICTION by Quentin Tarrentino |
COMBO August/SEPTEMBER 2017 | |
Remember the basis of Adventurous Thinking? It is Einstein's pivotal observation that "Imagination is greater than knowledge...for knowledge is limited..wheras imagination ..stimulates progress (and) gives birth to evolution". So thinking outside your expert (knowledge-based) brain. Sending humans to the moon is one great example but check out this 1930's illustration of a fantasy future (below). Look familiar? | |
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|
August and September was particularly inspired months thanks to the LEAN Products conference, continued work at NASA, Burning Man and the debut of my keynote Curiosity=Innovation. Stay tuned for a series of blogs on adding value with innovative thinking using my newly learned LEAN findings. My next Stanford weekend workshop runs December 9&10 and will welcome a group of Columbian entrepreneurs attending with an innovation colleague of mine. Details here.
Meanwhile - on with the Adventurous Thinking
Five Lens case studies!
As my friend Tom Matano says, stay inspired!
Sally Dominguez
Multifarian, Curious Provocateur
| |
Negative Space: Shrooms n Solar
For struggling farmers in Japan a double crop: one harvested every day and one seasonal. This new business model has farms producing energy as well as food crops for maximum productivity and return. The solar panels provide the shade and warmth that helps the mushrooms thrive. Imagine this model rolled out worldwide as a space-saving cross-production norm. Read More Here
| |
Still on my favorite topic of fungi, did you know that Fungi, specifically mycorrhizal fungi, are the internet of the plant world instrumental in transferring nutrients and carbon between plants? The Negative Space here is what we don't know, what we don't hear, what we are unaware of or only just discovering about this entire communications ecosystem. Suzanne Simard's TED talk "How Trees Talk To Each Other" is riveting and revelatory and SHOULD help us optimize and reimagine forestry practices. Meanwhile this awe-inspiring LIFE diagram from U.of Texas is worth digesting. We are there in tiny writing at top left. | |
|
Thinking Sideways: Nourishing with Music
| |
In my Workshops when we talk about building an innovation scaffold (What John Cleese calls a "Tortoise enclosure" ) music is an important part of productivity and wellbeing. | |
| |
|
Thinking Backwards: Eversion | |
Biomimicry - the application of plant and animal characteristics to human creations - is a fascinating exploration. Many bio-inspired robots have captured various ways of moving: Cheetbot runs like a cheetah, DARPA has a pack-carrying Dogbot and Snakebots may be the slithering answer to exploring unstable structures in disaster areas. Now for something totally different - Stanford researchers have examined how vines grow and developed a new exploratory bot using inflated tube and the concept of eversion (turning insideout) to create a bot whose base stays motionless while the tip extends and responds to to obstacles in its way. | |
Although inflated, this bot does not puncture due to the way it moves, giving it relevance in disaster exploration in all environments.
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ReThinking: Flat Pack Pasta with Twist | |
ReThinking is understanding the core value of an offering, and then representing it in a new way. That could mean finding a new customer or scaling it up or down. For MIT student Lining Yao it meant considering traditional pasta as something that could package flat, saving 2/3 of conventional pasta packaging, and then form its shape with heat and water. Check out the very artsy video here and Popsci feature here. | |
Parkour: in Healthcare & Education | |
Last week an Adventurous Thinking Alumni introduced me to an incredible innovator, healthcare thoughtleader Maureen Bisognano, who has been successfully inverting norms in healthcare for decades. Check out her with with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and stay tuned for an interview with Maureen who is constantly looking outside of her area of expertise to find best practice systems and new ways of doing. If you see her on a speaker's list - go! Meanwhile here is an article I wrote early this year on disrupting plagiarism in the classroom. | |
“If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.” -Jules Winnfield from PULP FICTION by Quentin Tarrentino
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