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Cool News Creativity Boom “The real source of all growth is human creativity and entrepreneurship, which always comes as a surprise to us, especially in the worst of times,” writes George Gilder in Forbes. According to George, the surprise is this: “Because the U.S. remains the world’s largest economy and still leads the world in business and technological creativity, the current crisis is confined to the boondoggles of finance. It will pass rapidly and evolve into a new boom … ” He says that “the crucial conflict in every economy … is not between rich and poor, Main Street and Wall Street, or even government and the private sector. It is between the established system and the new forms of wealth rising up to displace it — all the entrenched knowledge of the past and the insurrections of futuristic enterprise and invention.” However, George sees “structural change” leading to “huge growth in technology” ahead. Specifically, he cites the advent of “cloud computing” which he says will turn “the internet into a general-purpose computing system, with huge gains in versatility, speed and efficiency.” George is also jazzed about “the advance of graphics processor devices” for videogames. He cites the development of “nanotubes” enabling the “fast removal of all impurities from water … without the use of power, chemicals or ultraviolet light.” Finally, he touts iCrete, “a radically new and cheaper way to make concrete” that “is enabling a revival of architectural innovation,” and concludes: “Creativity is the ultimate source of all forms of power and freedom.” [Source: George Gilder, Forbes, 11/10/08] Innovation Economics “Innovation itself is a field in need of innovation,” says John Kao, a former Harvard Business School professor. “What we really need is more original thinking about how innovation works in society, and that could come from the philanthropic sector as well as universities,” he adds. Carl Shramm is answering John’s call as head of the Kauffman Foundation, founded in 1966 by Ewing Marion Kauffman, “a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and owner of Kauffman died in 1993 but wanted “his philanthropy to promote entrepreneurial activity and education.” Today, the foundation is one of the nation’s largest private supporters of economic research in universities.” One study involves some 5,000 companies that started up in 2004, and tracks “factors of success or failure.” Other research seeks “to identify the characteristics of … scientists who are most effective in ushering research advances into the marketplace.” Then there’s Kaufmann’s iBridge Network, an online database of inventions, which Carl Schramm describes as “an eBay for ideas.” He adds: “We try to foster a deeper understanding of the innovation process … [Source: Steve Lohr, New York Times, 11/11/08] Mothers of Innovation Brainstorming could be the worst thing you could do if innovation is the goal. First introduced in 1948 by Alex Osborn, brainstorming “has been proved in a number of studies over the last 20 years to be far less effective than generally believed.” Brainstorming is based on the “premise that to get good ideas, a group must generate a large list from which to cherry-pick.” A key problem with this, says innovation maven Drew Boyd, is that people tend to clam up when it comes to shouting out their best ideas in public. The irony is that while invention may be better hatched in isolation, innovation requires teamwork. In addition, says Drew, innovation is not about “identifying a problem and then seeking a solution.” He says it’s really just the opposite — deconstructing “successful products and processes into separate components, then studying those parts to find other potential uses.” [Source: Janet Rae-Dupree, New York Times, 12/7/08] --
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