Beyond Radiation

Zotero - Networked Creativity for R&D + Connections to del.icio.us

What does networked creativity mean? With Zotero's network model are close to Roger Schank's definition of creativity: search and alteration processes. Research results and sources will be more and more searched...and altered from one area to another. Wait a second a second, what is Zotero?

Zotero is a revolutionary Firefox 2.0 extension that enables you:

1. To store (download) full reference information to your machine. Supports library databases, Amazon, journal databases etc.
2. To save time tremendously, because you don't need to type those references. Additionally, typos are minimised, because those professional librarians can do the job more accurately ;-)
3. Update: To do internet research, Zotero allows you to take snapshots of WWW-pages and create a reference.  Similarly, a piece of text on screen can be highlighted and with the right mouse button stored as a reference.
4. To organise those downloaded references to a bibliography on your machine. (Works also off-line!)
   
5. To export your whole bibliography or parts of it in APA or other formats. (Works also off-line!)

A video demonstration of Zotero was useful for me. Although Zotero is in 1.0 beta phase, I have found it to be rather stable and reliable.

Zotero is a production of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is funded by the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Actually, it is a very large open source software (OSS) project and indicates how powerful those OSS communities are.

The new OSS-developed Mozilla Firefox 2.0 browser is a pre-condition to use Zotero.

A good reason to abandon your MS Internet Explorer ;-)

Many of you are familiar with del.icio.us. It is an extensive social bookmarking service, nowadays owned by Yahoo!. If you are a user of del.icio.us, please, ask my del.icio.us address and let's get networked!

I and my colleagues working with social media have been wondering, what is the connection between del.icio.us and Zotero. There is no data exchange or interoperability between these services (yet). Still, del.icio.us can be modified to include 'Tag Bundles'. One such tag bundle could perhaps be the Personal Library, with links pointing at your exported Zotero bibliography in HTML-format?

It won't take long before Zotero enables us all to share our bibliographies. This will definitely chance the our conception of research (and R&D). These activities will become more and more networked in nature. Update: There are many things happening in the Web 2.0 research and educational scene. Solution Watch has a nice overview of latest services and information systems.

BTW, What will happen to services like Citeseer, will they disappear or become some sort of aggregators?

Google for Educators + Mass-Customisation Conference article

One part of this Open Innovation phenomenon seems to be crowdsourcing and providing addictive user experiences.

In that sense the latest opening of Google was interesting:

Welcome to Google for Educators

In their own words: "We are inviting teachers to share your best ideas for using Google technology to innovate in the  classroom."...." The Google Teacher Academy is a pilot program designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies."   

This is actually nothing new, for example Microsoft has had similar programs: Partners in Learning. Still, I see that Google's invitation is more addictive, just look at those teacher interviews behind every Google tool. Still, this kind of integration of business, teachers and kids is not an easy topic. I wonder what Professor Nigel Thrift would say/write about this? His latest article "Re-inventing invention: new tendencies in capitalist commodification" is worth reading.

C-o-n-n-e-c-t-i-o-n : I am currently writing with Maria Antikainen and Marko Mäkipää an article for The Second Finnish Mass Customization and Personalization Forum - MCPF 2006. Our draft title (not a final one;-) "What Motivates Customers to Innovate and Participate for Free
- Web 2.0 Communities and Mass-Customisation". Perhaps Google for Educators will be one of the cases we will present?! We are not in a hurry, the article will be out in January 2007.

Any comments about the Google for Educators? Do you see the link with mass-customisation superficial ... or realistic?

Call for Creative Futures - Oulu, Finland

The 'Call for Creative Futures' conference will be held in Oulu, Finland between 10th and 11th October 2006. 

There are interesting keynote speakers, including:

- Sandra M. Dingli, The Edward de Bono Institute, University of Malta

- Judith Doyle, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada

My contribution is a workshop called "The connections of creativity, innovation and IT". After my short introduction, the following presentations will take place:

- Johanna Still: The Influence of R&D Network Conditions on its Knowledge Creation - Cases New Mobile Service Development Networks

- Katariina Ala-Rämi and Tommi Inkinen: Information Technology, communication and innovative networking. The case of

Northern Finland

Key topics: open innovation, reorganisation of R&D, communities of practice, mobility, mobile learning, problem-based learning, Web 2.0, organisational learning, telework.

I am glad to chair with Professor Sanna Järvelä. She is an expert in motivation, learning and IT related topics.  I am still seeking the connection between Creative Problem-solving (CPS) and Problem-based Learning (PBL).

Let's hope that learning and education themes will be central in all creativity conferences in the future. It seems to me that many of those "Creative City" programs / conferences are not focused on learning and educational topics at all. In that sense The Call for Creative Futures Oulu -conference has a positive start :-)

Afterword: The Oulu conference is free of charge. So, get registrated!

Does anonymity improve ideas and suggestions?

So, how to design a Electronic Suggestion Management System ESMS (or an Innovation Management Information System) that supports BOTH creativity AND anononymity? I earlier wrote about the creativity requirements by Farooq, Carroll and Ganoe. One of their main recommendation was 'Leverage cognitive conflict by preserving and reflecting on minority dissent'. In plain English: 'Let those critical voices be heard and utilise this information when improving ideas'. But, but, how can you do this in an organisation where everything you suggest is linked to your role and position? Does anonymity help in motivating people to make suggestions and provide feedback?

Fairbank, Sprangler and Williams (2003) suggest that the building of an (ideal)  Suggestion Management System should be based on motivational theories. Their view is similar to Teresa Amabile.

Expectancy theory of motivation indicates that the motivational force for performing a task is greatest when the performer believes that :

(a) he or she is able to succesfully complete the task (i.e., high expectancy),

(b) completing the task will lead to certain outcomes ( i.e. high instrumentality),

(c) the outcomes for completing the task are attractive (i.e., high valence, or value).

Allowing anonymity in idea suggestions most likely improves (a) high expectancy.

When Nunamaker et al. (1991) inspected electronic meeting room systems (EMS) they found that anonymous EMS use generated more critical comments. No wonder, participants in EMS field studies reported that anonymity was important, particularly in cases where there were power and status differences in the group.

It would be great to hear your comments about anonymity. Does it improve the quality of ideas? Does it make the use of ESMS or EMS more pleasant or motivating?

From Closed Innovation to Open Innovation: IRIS Helsingor Denmark

How to increase customer involvement through mass customization and customer co-design? That was the question we (Marko Mäkipää, Maria Mäntymäki and I) asked in our 29th Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia Helsingor paper. A draft is available: Download IRIS29_final_Makipaa_Ahonen_Mantymaki.pdf and the final paper will be available in the conference proceedings. Like described in the picture below, we were seeking a transition path from closed innovation to open innovation.

We found that when seeking to increase customer loyalty and attracting new customers, companies need to increase customer involvement in research and design (R&D) operation. This itself radically changes the innovation process and how ideas and customer communication are handled.

Brokering and social networking processes are therefore described in this open innovation context. The technology brokering process model by Hargadon and Sutton (1997) is used to describe open innovation. Or more like: how to search for new ideas and how to store them for further use. Certain business cases are introduced where the customers have a radically different role. The use and role of information systems in these processes are discussed. It would be great to receive feedback about this IRIS paper of ours.

Afterword: Marko Mäkipää has just received an acceptance of  a Tekes project on mass customization, Maria Mäntymäki has a new job in the Center for Open Source Software (COSS) and I reported in my earlier post about a new open innovation research project. Some co-incidences ;-)

P.S. If you are interested in the connections of open innovation and co-design, please, ask for the older article by Pekka Ketola (Nokia Multimedia) and myself. Includes a Chinese mobile phone design case! Made for the 12th Product Development Management Conference, Copenhagen.

New Open Content & Open Innovation Research Project

Last Wednesday (15th June 2006), two projects:
Gamespace (Mobile Game Evaluation) and Parteco (Particatory Content
Creation and Open Innovation) were accepted by Tekes (http://www.tekes.fi). This was a happy day for my research unit, the Hypermedia Laboratory - University of Tampere :-)

This Tekes-decision enables me to work as a researcher next 20 months in the Parteco project. Some continuity! My project duties will include innovation management IT research, idea market research, group creativity research and global expert Delphi interviews on open innovation.

I will be back in open innovation research topics in my future posts.

" There are too many ideas held by people who don't work for you to ignore "
(Chesbrough, 2003)

Decision Support Systems and Creativity

In business talk creativity, management and information systems are far away from each other. Especially technically trained managers are a bit suspicious about creativity, there is a tension between rational thinking and creative thinking like Tudor Rickards illustrates. What could be the glue bringing these concepts together? Could it be Decision Support Systems (DSS)?

There are many definitions of a DSS, but all have three themes: (1) applied to unstructured problems, (2) supports but does not replace the decision process, and (3) is under the user’s control. This fits to information systems as well?

George Marakas has written a comprehensive book called "Decision Support Systems in the 21st  Century". One total chapter is devoted to creative decision making and problem solving.

Marakas clearly sees that "In the realm of DSS design, mechanisms must be developed to allow the decision maker to impart intuition to the decision process as a supplement to other problem-solving resources, including creativity". When you look at the attached picture, [Programmable] is seen by Marakas contradictory to [Intuitive, Creative]. This surely makes IS support for creativity demanding! Currently DSS Information Systems are not very flexible. Actually, it is funny what is considered as DSS Information System / software.

When talking about the future, Marakas point out: "The integration of components of expert systems and other AI approaches with organizational DSSs presents a major focus". New requirements for creativity support in information systems? Great challenge, I am working on it ;-)

Hey, if you happen to know any good Decision Support System with support for creativity, please,  comment! Other comments about the DSS phenomenon are welcome as well!

Seeking Resources in Smart Systems - Flow in Coding?

In Seinäjoki, Finland, there will be the Smart Systems 2006 / ICMA 2006 conference + Innovation Fair. I will present there my research, software prototype and business proposition. My presentation topic is called "Creativity support for innovation process - method and information system ".               

Software development is time consuming and even expensive. Therefore, I have taken this step (coding has even caused some delays in my dissertation work and related pilots ;-) So, I am looking for some extra funding and resources for my mobile prototype and related server platform. Don't get me wrong, I still see coaching and mentoring important within creativity development and innovation management.

By the way, what has creativity to do with software development?  I have earlier discussed about flow and it's elements (in a strange context!). Coding can be immersive and some researchers claim that the flow phenomenon takes place during the programming phase. Please, take a look at the interesting results and the article by Benno Luthiger. His article is called "Fun and Software Development". I liked it a lot. Still, the results are somewhat confusing: "The more deadlines are felt during project work, the more likely the software developers experience flow"! Hey, Luthiger is talking about open source projects.

To me programming is hard work where your back starts aching and sleepless nights make you look like a Zombie next morning :-\  Maybe I should twist some parts of my software prototype to SourceForge-project and start enjoying coding with like-minded people  ?!  Let's see...  My colleague, open source expert Niklas Vainio just wrote about this dilemma in his blog and evaluated Karl Fogel's 'Producing Open Source Software'. Worth reading!

 

Modelling an information System for Creativity - Farooq, Carroll & Ganoe

What has creativity to do with IS (information systems)? Is it really possibly construct a platform that supports creativity? A State-of-Art research paper by Umer Farooq, John M. Carroll, and Craig H. Ganoe is worth reading. It is called: "Supporting Creativity in Distributed Scientific Communities". Available through ACM Portal or here.

Remember, when I complained about the lack of creativity research understanding in IS and usability  research papers? This is not the case with their paper. Farooq, Carrol and Ganoe first provide a nice review of findings in the creativity, group interaction and CSCW literature.

Then they define 3 requirements for supporting creativity:

1. Support for divergent and convergent thinking

2. Development of shared objectives

3. Reflexivity.

I buy their requirements. Few comments:
- Within the first item, divergent and convergent thinking skills could be perhaps measured measured before using the system and tools/views could be tailored based on those test results. But then we are talking about adaptivity and adaptive systems (I personally experienced their difficulties while developing MOBIlearn)
- The second item, shared objectives, is not recognised in many creativity research papers and artifacts. I liked their comment "strong goal commitment is necessary to maintain group member persistence for implementation in the face of resistance among other organizational members".
- The third item, reflexivity, is similar to (critical) reflection. Centrality of experience, critical reflection, and rational discourse are all common themes in Mezirow's Transformational Learning theory. 

Finally Farooq & Co suggest 3 design implications to support creativity in CSCW (my comments in blue):

1) Integrate support for individual, dyadic, and group brainstorming. Comment: This is tricky. Individual workspaces and tools have been traditionally missing from many groupware systems. I welcome  the effort of Farooq &Co to address this. Brainstorming is just one technique and many researchers like Yrjö Engeström and Kalevi Rantanen see that the the context and object defines which techniques are suitable. Technical problems and TRIZ are good examples of alternative problem finding/solving techniques.

2) Leverage cognitive conflict by preserving and reflecting on minority dissent. Comment: This minority dissent was first difficult me to grasp. As Farooq & Co propose,  the skeptic voices are important and these traces should be kept visible in the IS and there should discussion about them along the line.

3) Support flexibility in granularity of planning. Comment: Innovation is a systematic process. Journaling and planning processes (and tools) are elementary parts of creativity. As Csikszentmihalyi points are, creative people and groups are complex in their nature, they can shift from organised to disorganised when needed. Farooq, Carrroll and Ganoe point out that social networks and their management is a crucial part of creativity.

Is there something to add to this paper? Not much, the authors have been even wise to focus on scientific communities and not to claim that their findings can be generalised for the business world ;-) The Wiki artefact described in the paper is truly interesting, but the BRIDGE ourceforge project may be out of date? I have understood that authors are working with the next generation Citeseer, so, this fact may guide their work even more.

I am curious to hear more about the future work of Farooq, Carroll and Ganoe.

Idea-Portfolios in the Innovation Process: IADIS Mobile Learning Dublin

What portfolios have to do with innovation? Do ideas just pop up to our mind or are they nurtured somewhere? Which confidentiality levels are needed in business and academic organisations? How technologies like electronic portfolios, blogs and wikis can support reflection, learning and problem-finding? Does the following kind of architecture sustain or obstruct creativity?

With Antti Syvänen we wrote a paper inspecting a new kind of artefact: Idea-Portfolio.

This paper will be presented at the IADIS Mobile Learning -conference in Dublin in July 2006. There will be a track called Creativity and Mobile Learning.

It would be great to receive comments from the attached draft ;-) Download iadis_mobile_learning_dublin_ahonen_syvnen_creativity_portfolios_final.pdf .