Chance favors the "connected" business

"Chance favors the connected mind." - Steven Johnson, author of "Where Good Ideas Come From"

One of my favorite bloggers on creativity is Douglas Eby, who recently posted these thoughts on Incubating Innovation and Creativity:

One of the theoretical four stages of creativity (along with preparation, illumination, and verification), incubation is defined as 'a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time.'

Eby links to the video here of John Dabiri, a Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering at Caltech, who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010. Dabiri's work,

'draws on a wide range of fields—including theoretical fluid dynamics, evolutionary biology, and biomechanics—to unravel the secrets of one of the earliest means of animal locomotion,' according to a profile on the MacArthur site.

Dabiri's sources his ideas about wind power, for example, to the dynamics of fish schooling. It's one illustration of how his learned - "preparation" is one state of creativity! - and connected mind is predisposed to novel ideas in engineering.   

The IdeaFestival is similarly about making new connections, and annually brings together top thinkers, tinkerers and creatives to describe their work and inspiration. While Eby's interest in Dabiri's work is primarily intellectual, the connected, or creative, process isn't merely of academic interest. David Barnes and Heather Howell, for example, will explore business innovation at IdeaFestival 2011.

If you're wondering whether the "connected" business has a real-world payoff, think about this: sixty percent of Apple's 2010 revenue was derived from products that didn't even exist four years ago.

Wayne

"What we do here will improve life on Earth."

Early in this video tour of the space station shot during TED Global, astronaut Ron Garan says "What we do here will improve life on Earth."

It's true. During any six-month period, about 200 experiments of all kinds are being conducted on station. In fact, the use of micro-gravity for bio-medical research has become a hot topic.

One might fly, for example, glioblastoma cells, or experiment with how neuronal growth cones cope in space. Not only is there basic science to be done, but experiments at these heights might result in therapies that can be applied at the bottom of the gravity well.

At IdeaFestival 2011, Program Scientist for the International Space Station, Dr. Julie Robinson, will describe the science being done - much of it paid for by commercial interests - on humanity's orbiting laboratory now that it has been completed. The answers might indeed be out there.

Of equal interest to the casual observer, is the commercialization of access to orbit. The shuttle is a magnificent machine, and the ISS could not have been built without it. But Atlantis' landing Thursday, while sad, is certainly not the end of the "space program." Several private sector organizations are vying to deliver cargo and humans to the ISS - you might watch this video of one competitor's ride to orbit - which will let NASA set its sights, and use its increasingly scarce public resources, on destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

Wayne

Dying to do Letterman

Documenting a dream to appear on the show, "Dying to do Letterman" has been invited by the International Documentary Association to compete for an Oscar®.

The subject of the film, comedian Steve Mazan, will be at IdeaFestival 2011.

Competing for an Oscar is pretty expensive, which is why a Kickstarter fund-raiser has been launched. The project has already raised $43,000 to date and there are 48 days to go. The goal is $100,000. 

The least expensive all-access passes of the year are on sale for a limited time only. Get yours now!

Wayne

Wholehearted lives

I was reminded of this TED Talk while reading Gretchen Rubin's blog, The Happiness Project, and since I've already told that it's not about you, I thought on this Friday that I'd let you know that it is - at least when it comes to happiness. Interviewed by Rubin, Dr. Brené Brown, a researcher professor at the University of Houston, describes why we're are own worst enemies:

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We're almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it's inviting disaster. I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it. It's a struggle for me - especially since I became a mother, but I'm working on it. Every day....

It's hard for me to be happy when I'm perfecting, pretending, pleasing and proving myself. I'm too exhausted.

Let's just say that "perfecting, pretending, pleasing and proving" struck a chord. Have a great weekend.

Wayne

Hats and ties and buzz cuts

Some rights reserved by Evelyn Proimos

If you can believe it, the show "Mad Men" tells us there was a time when men went to work in hats and ties. Only a couple decades past the carnage of the Second World War, it was a time of ascendant industrial might, new financial reach and flush public money for basic science in the United States. A wealthy middle class emerged. One need only look at public university campuses and their legacy mid-century modern architecture to see where their children were educated.

Because I was born at the very end of that baby boom, and because I love flying and space, the image that always comes to mind about that period are the buzz-cut engineers from the Apollo program. Using slide rules, they built colossal motors, called forth Earth-cleaving fire, sent good and courageous men in gossamer craft to surface of the moon, and returned them, flying under red and white banners, in scorched capsules. An adoring public celebrated.

Mired in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, one could be forgiven for wondering if those times will ever return. Yesterday, reading Robert Krulwich's May commencement speech to the Berkeley Journalism School, re-posted by Ed Young at Discover as "There are Some People who Don't Wait," I thought again of men in hats and ties, of buzz cuts and of national triumph.

"The future," as the science fiction writer William Gibson said several years ago, "is here – it's just not evenly distributed." In fact, futures from here on out may never bear much resemblance to pasts they replace. One would think that the entire last century would have made that lesson clear to one and all. But judging from the angry public tone today, there's a genuine mourning - voiced almost exclusively, I might add, by the people who lived that past - about what's come undone. I guess hurt will do that. The problem is that history never belongs to any one group.

Despite everything, Krulwich is an optimist. So am I.

It's true that today's graduates probably won't have the same job security enjoyed by the engineers that worked on the Apollo program. Ditto for the journalists, as Krulwich reminds us. Perhaps, especially for journalists - hurt more often seeks comfort, not explanations, and the economics of publishing, if not journalism, are lousy.

The good news is that these men and women are more free to create futures for themselves that are as different as they are - more free, mercifully, from News of the World hostage-taking because of who they are - more free to act on an idea, and to accept the consequences or take the bows. That spirit animates the IdeaFestival. That spirit is our inheritance. For a few days in September, Louisville holds a party and the impossible migrates from the headlines and news type, and makes its way magically to a stage and, finally, to our skin. One need only bring a curious and open mind. The goose pimples are free.

The fact is, there will always be room for visionaries, explorers, people undeterred by mad proposals to go to the moon. Elon Musk sold Paypal, and with NASA as a client, is building the rockets and capsules that will replace the Space Shuttle, which, sort of, replaced the Apollo rockets. Look up the SpaceX videos. Like the Apollo splashdowns, they're all on screen.

For every end, there is a beginning. It's like that because we humans will always be curious creatures, unable to set aside our expectation that it can all somehow be better than before. I think that's worth a celebration. Don't you?

Wayne