Innovation and Process

Dave over at Communication Nation, picked up on an interesting point saying,

Stop searching for God and just sit!

You know it strikes me as interesting that when businesses want to see more innovation, they talk about creativity. They hold workshops on how to be creative. But when you talk to most creative people — like artists, inventors, and yes, bloggers — they don’t talk about creativity, they talk about process.

Is it possible that the reason we creative types talk about processes is because once the processes are taken care of, we have more time to spend dreaming – hence more time to spend being creative?

The bicycle ambulance

Wonderful, real-world, open-source, innovative and useful design.
Via the Canadian Design Resource.

Manufactured by Design for Development.

Innovative vs. Useful

Here’s an article on Basement.org that talks about how Video iPods are cool but not useful. It draws on the Nielsen study that says that video use on iPods is very low.

I personally can never imagine spending more time than it takes to cast a cursory glance to view a video on the video iPod. Especially not for interesting content – I might use it to view some lectures from Stanford [ where the audio is important than the video and the only reason I might view the video is because there might be a PowerPoint presentation in the background ].

I own a U2 edition, 20 GB, black and white audio iPod.

Innovation and Change

As human beings, the most resisted aspect of life is change. As an organization, the most resisted aspect of “business-life” is innovation because innovation brings about change. If change and innovations [ and by innovation here I mean innovation in the organizational processes and management and not product-innovation ] are to be introduced successfully in life and in the organization, to minimize the resistance, the most logical thing to do would be to introduce it step-by-step and slowly.

But contrast that with someone trying to quit an addiction [ for example ]. For them each day without the addictive substance is a small victory and a huge change as compared to their previously addiction-filled life. There is debate whether it is better to quit smoking in one go or to start reducing the intake one cigarette at a time. I personally believe that it is better to completely cut out the cigarette intake – the first week/month might be full of tough withdrawal symptoms but the problem is more likely to be cured. But what if I switch the addiction from smoking to drugs? Quitting drugs overnight is not only not recommended, specialized care is also needed for people addicted to various kinds of drugs.

Depending on the kind of innovation that an organization is going in for, they could either do it by themselves or they could hire someone to work with them. It could either be picking a thorn out of the organization’s foot or it could require a sophisticated heart and brain surgery. Either ways, it’s better to have help and professional help at that.

Since the subject of Innovation is extremely subjective and no two cases are the same, a great contribution to the growth of Innovation Practice would be documented case studies detailing the peculiarities of each case.

Personal Art Portfolio launched

I have also now managed to launch my personal blog and website at www.nainaredhu.com where the main aim is to create awareness about my art [ which would fall under the category of Indian contemporary art since I'm in India ] and hopefully create a market for the same.

Hiring : Java PHP MySQL and Linux programmers

Hiring for the following requirements: [ these requirements are for the web development company that belongs to a friend of mine ]

  • Java — someone who is a pro with Java Velocity. This is for a ongoing offshore setup where we are upgrading the site for a client.
  • PHP — freshers with an experience in PHP (if they did a course or did a project in final year MCA using PHP+MySQL). Money will be more if the person has a good amount of practical knowledge.
  • PHP+MySQL — person with 1-1.5 years of experience.
  • PHP+MySQL+Linux —- same as number 2 above but with a smattering of Linux administration khow (yeah this one is the designer drug). This guy is required to do the support work for an application and needs to be fast on the uptake, polished wrt email writing and reasonably good with the tech.

This small-time company’s been growing like crazy and he’s in a rush to hire because of the project load. All the jobs are based in Mumbai, India.

Please e-mail your CV’s to khanimtiaz @ gmail . com