Coevolving Innovations

Coevolving Innovations

… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies

Lifelong education on service systems: a perspective for STEM learners

January 12, 2010
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One of the benefits of the IBM’s Smarter Planet vision(s) is its encouragement to think about the 21st century world from a fresh perspective.  The rise of the service economy — which is not the same as the service sector — calls for the nurturing of talents with different emphases.  While curricula typically have a strong grasp of agricultural systems (developed since, say, 1600 A,.D.), and industrial systems (since, say, 1850 A.D.), the science of service systems is still emerging.

A study on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by a 2007 National Academies committee published recommendations in 2008 for professional science master’s education that is interdisciplinary in character.  Such an investment in curriculum change has been proposed as a good use of stimulus funding in the U.S. In concert, 8 of 10 students expressed a wish for universities to revamp their traditional learning environments in the Smarter Planet University Jam conducted in spring 2009 .

In 2008 and 2009, the focus has shifted to primary and secondary school education, convening another National Academies committee centered on K-12, with a report due in 2010.  Jim Spohrer — formerly the Director of Almaden Services Research, and now the Director of IBM Global University Programs — updated me on his current thinking about a potential design for education on Smarter Planet Service Systems.

Systems that move, store, harvest, process Kindergarten Transportation
1 Water and waste management
2 Food and global supply chain
3 Energy and energy grid
4 Information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure
Systems that enable healthy, wealthy and wise people 5 Building and construction
6 Banking and finance
7 Retail and hospitality
8 Healthcare
9 Education (including universities)
Systems that govern 10 Government (cities)
11 Government (regions / states)
12 Government (nations)
Higher education Specific service systems
Professional life Specific service systems

Jim is following confirmation of the effectiveness of a Challenge-Based Learning approach by the New Media Consortium as “a strategy to engage kids in any class by giving them the opportunity to work on significant problems that have real-world implications”. … Read more (in a new tab)

Want your eyes and hands free? Have this blog read to you!

January 8, 2010
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As much as I read content from the web — either through a feed reader (I’m currently favouring RssOwl) or a browser (I read with Firefox, and post comments with Flock and Cocomment) — there are times when I want my eyes and hands to be free.  I maintain a queue of MP3 audio recordings on a Creative Zen V for listening when walking or driving, and subsequently report on lectures and interview worth noting on the Media Input Queue blog.

The content on this Coevolving Innovations blog is text intensive — people who prefer photos are better to follow the Distractions, Reflections blog — so I have sympathies for readers who find the length tedious.

I was following through on some dialogue on mentoring from Sacha Chua (@sachac) to a blog post by Brian O’Donovan on social software (@bodonovan).  I noticed he had a “Listen” button on the entry, so I pressed it … triggering an automated reading of the content in a woman’s voice. This experiment gave me a close-to-perfect reproduction of the text content (and I could guess the meaning of the mispronunciations).

Following through the links, I discovered ReadSpeaker webReader, which originated as a service for the visually impaired.  For personal web sites, webSpeaker Free is an ad-supported service (with pre and/or post audio, and banners in the player).  It took me less than ten minutes to install on this WordPress blog (as one of the benefits of self-hosting on my own domain).… Read more (in a new tab)

Russell Ackoff, abridged

January 4, 2010
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In Toronto — partially in response to members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences looking for sustainable alternatives to the pattern of annual meetings outside of North America every other year — we’ve started a Systems Sciences Meetup group.  There’s a rich history of people and events in the systems sciences in Toronto, and we’ve been remiss in keeping the momentum going.

The purpose of these meetups is to enable conversations amongst like-minded people interested in (continuing to) climb the learning curve on (the) systems science(s).  Having a keynote speaker provides a centre around which the conversations can coalesce.  In November 2009, Allenna Leonard led the first meetup with a talk on “What are the Systems Sciences”.  Given the holiday season, we deferred the next meeting to January.

With the announcement of a Memorial Celebration for Russell Ackoff in Philadelphia in February, it seemed natural to prepare a session for those unfamiliar with his life and work.  Thus, for the January 6 Systems Sciences Meetup, I’ll be leading a talk on “Russell Ackoff, abridged“.  Having satisfied a personal goal to create a single double-sided page of  highlights, I’ll be relying on two maps as visual aids.

Following a style prescribed by the master himself — not just examining the system, but also its environment — the professional timeline of Russell Ackoff includes his relationships with the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations (that included Fred Emery and Eric Trist), as well as C.… Read more (in a new tab)

Digital photos: capturing, archiving, printing, web sharing, photoblogging

December 22, 2009
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Digital cameras have become so common that they’re often now a feature in mobile phones and audio players.  Pressing a button to capture a snapshot of time is so easy.  The workflow of storing, printing and sharing those images is complicated.  Many would like to return to the days when we would just take the film cartridge out of the camera, and drop it to a photo lab for processing (often in about an hour).

People take more photographs digitally than they did with film cameras.  In a six-month study in 2000, when digital cameras were relatively uncommon, subjects (aged 24 to 38) took 200 to 1000 (with an average about 500) photographs, compared to their prior non-digital accumulated collection of 300 to 3000 (with an average of about 1000) pictures (Rodden & Wood 2003).  This means that when digital cameras were relatively expensive — and camera phones didn’t yet exist — people were averaging about 1 to 5 photos per day!

People presumably use cameras because they want to be able to retrieve the images later.  In a study of 18 parents, the value of long-retrieval of family pictures was high (i.e. around 4.7 on a scale of 5).  On experiments of 71 retrieval tasks — finding birthdays, family trips, first pictures of a child, etc. — 61% were successful, taking about 2.5 minutes each.  On the 39% of unsuccessful retrievals, subjects gave up after about 4 minutes  (Whittaker et al.… Read more (in a new tab)

Conversations: for action, for clarification, for possibilities, for orientation

December 12, 2009
5 Comments

In the Adaptive Enterprise research that I had conducted between 1998 and 2001, I was primarily focused on conversations for action, towards a commitment action protocol. I extended, in 2008, those ideas into a research paper to recognize (at least) four types of obligations:

  • commitments to produce a deliverable;
  • commitments to follow a process;
  • commitments to provide a capability; and
  • commitments to contribute to a relationship.

These four types were not considered exhaustive, but helpful in understanding how service systems work.

In the background, I’ve always known that there are other kinds of conversation.  To be explicit about these, I’ll refer to a 1987 article by Terry Winograd (that was a revision of 1986 workshop paper reprinted in 1988).

Winograd provides the foundations back to speech act theory, from Austin, and then Searle.

Austin (1962) noted that not all utterances are statements whose truth or falsity is at stake. Performatives, such as I pronounce you husband and wife are actions, which can be made appropriately (felicitously) or not, but which are neither true nor false in a simple sense. Similarly, the language actions of commands, questions, and apologies are not descriptions of a non-linguistic world.

Searle (1975) identified five fundamental illocutionary points — things you can do with an utterance:

Blogging, microblogging, webstreaming

November 26, 2009
3 Comments

While some of my activity on the Internet is recreational, I continue to play with web tools to learn about the ever-evolving technology.  While the average person has become comfortable with e-mail, web feeds are still pretty much a mystery to many.  The RSS and Atom specifications first used by newswires has become the principal form of web syndication for blogs and social media.

I’ve recently rearranged my pattern of web use (again).  To encourage readers to think about how they use the Internet, let me pose four questions.

  • 1. Which principles on web content do I have in mind?
  • 2. How do I post content, and flow it?
  • 3. Why have I recently changed my use?
  • 4. What consideration should web users have for their content?

With the way that technology continues to evolve, the specific web applications may change … but the pattern should remain the same.

1. Which principles on web content do I have in mind?

My attitude is reflected in two ideas:  (a) open content with attribution, and (b) open platforms with interoperability.

(a) Open content with attribution reflects that I like to share my learning with other people.   Posting the content on the Internet improves access and distribution.  I understand the workings of copyright — there’s a Creative Commons license on this blog — which means that I retain ownership of my words, on the condition that if someone wants to formally cite the work, he or she should cite me as the source. … Read more (in a new tab)

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