Thinking for Our Future

The Creative Innovation conference finished on Friday with an incredible program of speakers on the day including Ray Kurzweil, Edward Debono, Rufus Black, Paddy Miller, Brendan Boyle & Tan Le. 

From an education perspective, the conference was a great chance to meet and network with people from business, industry, philanthropy and to talk to many successful entrepreneurs. Kurzweil stated in his talk that, “most people in developed countries are doing jobs that did not exist when they were born.” and this was clearly supported with some of the job titles of the people that I met throughout the conference – titles such as, Innovation Architect, Chief Fulfiller of Needs, Life Coach, Inventiologist, Changemaker, Bubbleologist, Bubbleosopher, Chief Ideas Officer, Thinking Strategist etc.

Education is too insular – we need to get out more and see what is happening in the world, to meet people with different backgrounds and interests, to see what is happening in business and industry – this allows for cross-sector collaboration and pollination. Many of the people I met are very eager to work with people in education, but just need an entry point. 

My immediate actions:

The purchase of an emotiv EPOC headset (with the SDK) to see how Quantum Victoria can use brain-machine interface and neuro-technology to re-energize interest in science among secondary school students.

Research Brendan Boyle’s d.School at Stanford University. Brendan was a real class-act and very generous with his time. He spoke at length about the principles of design thinking and the importance of play. The philosophy of making play part of the process to increase creativity and innovation was supported by the idea that play should involve 1.Role Play 2. The Encouragement of Ridiculous – the ebb and flow of ideas 3. Thinking with your hands. He shared many fun examples of students using design thinking in whimsical ways.

The Institute of Design at Stanford have made available all their material on design thinking and creative processes available for anyone to use – definitely something to investigate further.

And finally, Paddy Miller blew me away with his work on creating an ecosystem for innovation – definitely check out his book the Innovation Architect when it becomes available.