Beyond Creativity

Creativity is ... Attitude

In Berkeley, CA, USA, I met amazingly wise and educated street merchants.
Somehow, I just wanted to have  the following sticker:

Ever since I got this sticker, it has been hanging on my door at the university.

Einstein was famous for his proverbs and quotations. I welcome you to take a look at them. If someone knows where these proverbs can found in German, I would be most grateful! (Einstein's English was not excellent, I suppose some of those English quotations are therefore translated from German).

Nowadays I am well known for my polite and still uncomfortable questions. It is a skill that gets better when you practise it a lot ;-)

How can inventing be research?

Too often research and practise are totally separated tracks. I have met  inventors who dislike science and research, because "researchers have nothing practical to provide". Somehow I have a feeling that these sceptics do not really understand the current state of research and its methods.

True, the traditional, positivistic view on science does not accept inventing in the university.  However, design research and especially Herbert Simon's book "The Sciences of the Artificial" was the first attempt to introduce inventing in research and emphasise the importance of artefacts .

The term artifact is used to describe something that is artificial, or constructed by humans, as opposed to something that occurs naturally (Simon 1996).

"Building a system in of itself does not constitute research", saw Jay Nunamaker & Co. I agree. Theories need to guide the building process of systems and artefacts .

Artefacts are built, evaluated and demolished as part of design research. In Information Systems (IS) field this is called design science. If you are interested in building artefacts (software, models, prescriptions, etc) I recommend you to take a look at:

- Design Research in Information Systems, an overview by Vijay Vaishnavi and Bill Küchler (UPDATE D 20th Jan 2008) .

- Action Design - a method integrating action research and design science. Originally this was introduced by Chris Argyris. There is a company and a consulting methodology related to it. BUT, more interesting stuff is coming from Matti Rossi, Maung Sein, Ola Henfridsson & Co.  Please, keep on eye on their work.

- The evolutionary management-related work of Joan van Aken: "Prescription-driven research that provides solutions for management problems in addition to description driven research that enables us to understand the nature of problems but leaves undone the task of developing sound change programs".

- Theory of Design Science:  The latest article by Shirley Gregor and David Jones.

(If the links above do not work or you need more info about design research, please, let me know)

Afterword: Thanks to my advisor, professor Pertti Järvinen for advancing this field and my understanding.

Ethics of Innovation - Health Risks in the Mobile World

How responsible are those people and companies inventing the latest mobile devices and wireless networks?

What if these devices and wireless networks are like cigarettes: after prolonged use some people get seriously ill?

I took my time investigating:

- "Results from present studies on use of mobile phones for >10 years give a consistent pattern of
increased risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma (brain tumors)". This study of Lennart Hardell & Co investigated two cohort studies and 16 case control studies. The paper was published in April 2007 in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Journal. 

- "... found no evidence for an association between tumor risk and cellular telephone use among either short-term or long-term users." A Danish study inspecting adults and their use of mobile phones in 21 years time period. Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

- "Children should not place computers on their laps while they are using wireless Internet connections because of potential health risks" . Says professor Lawrie Challis, who also leads the committee on mobile phone safety research in UK.

- "Blue Angels mobile phones  for children should not be provided by teleoperators and dealers, since their SAR rate is above 0,6 W/kg . Children are recommended to use  corded phones in their daily communication. (Translation from German)  This statement was made by the German Government Bureau of Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz). Similar concern was expressed here.

These kind of results, although controversial, make me...worried. Remember: our generation started using mobile phones when we were adults. Younger generations start using mobile devices and wireless networks in their early childhood and they will be exposed to various sorts of radiation much longer than our generation.

What does this has to do with ethics and innovation? The following incident 'woke me up':

In February 2007 I was attending a seminar in Helsinki and was listening to one of the inventors of Apache Mobile Web Server. In terms of ARPU this kind of server in the mobile phone means more traffic and more income from data transfer to operators. From ubiquitous computing perspective user may carry all services with himself/herself (in the mobile phone) and have them easily accessible.

During his presentation I asked that inventor, an engineer, whether he and his partners have thought about implications on health of people using that server in their mobile phone (in their pocket) 24/7. He did not answer my question, more like he continued to explain how fantastic technologically this invention theirs is.

I find this kind of behaviour (and answer) irresponsible. These  mobile pocket servers will most likely multiply the amount of radiation to the tissues of the user. Is it really ethical to innovate if we do not pay close attention to possible health effects already in the invention phase? How much have we tested these services' health effects before launching to market / releasing in a community? What does sustainability mean in the mobile business? I am glad to hear your comments about these topics.

UPDATE 13th January 2008:  Check also the next part of this discussion: "Ethics of Innovation 2 -  Recommendations for Sustainable Mobile Inventions".

After word: There has been some good 'ethics of innovation' discussion before. Please, look at here and here and here. 

Finland is absent every July - Innovation Sauna Heating Up!

(Updated 13th March 2008). I am back from holiday. With tens of hours spend in the sauna and in lakes with family, friends and colleagues. What? Spending precious time in a sauna? I am not kidding !

Okey, sauna is our fixation. There are several millions of saunas in Finland (almost every household has one + saunas at summer cottages  + public saunas).Some of our 150.000 lakes are even overpopulated by saunas ;-) 

Traditionally in July Finland is closed, at least in business terms. Foreign business partners are wondering, why it so difficult to reach a Finn in July. When you compare yearly work productivity hours, we are far away from Chinese and even behind many European countries. Still, our innovation (invention) rate per capita has been the 2nd highest. Why? I  would claim that is partly because of sauna. We have spend a lot of time in the idea-nurturing phase or as psychoanalyst Kubie calls it "preconcious state". I say "have spent" because the understanding of the importance of sauna in creative work processes has diminished in the current Finnish work life.  Just recently I got the chance to comment the 'Creativity Strategy of Finland' draft for the Ministry of Education. I emphasized the importance of sauna in our creativity culture and indicated some underused resources. OK, sauna is our competitive edge, but it is really difficult for other countries to 'copy' or 'imitate' sauna culture. What we Finns could do better, is to introduce immigrants and foreign visitors to sauna culture and let them enjoy it their way.

There is an expression , or a joke -- "as talkative as a Finn" -- meaning, of course, just the opposite :-) Yes, we don't always prefer chit chat or small talk. We Finns dislike formalities and get easily confused when somebody asks " How are you?" and we are not allowed to say how we really feel, " I am fine" is not enough (in that sense we are similar to Russians :-) We like solitude and space around us. But we do like to talk as well, especially after the the sauna when we are cooling up, sitting on a bench and looking at the lake ;-) It is great to let your mind wander...and talk. Business talks take traditionally place in  saunas in Finland. (Foreigners (especially Conan O'Brien ;-) do not need to worry about nudity any more, we have even adapted a swimming-suit-on policy in public saunas ;-)

Tampere Area has the densiest winter sauna (or winter swimming) concentration in the world (some examples here).  I am glad that my region has that kind of culture and resource. Great lake scenaries (picture), friendly people, fantastic feeling, pure awareness all year round :-) I have never met a sulking or angry people in the winter sauna. Maybe it is because those very stressed people do not visit winter saunas and do not make a splash in an ice hole?  BTW, the Wikipedia article about sauna does not mention at all winter swimming and health benefits. Therefore I updated the Wikipedia Ice swimming page ;-)

It would be great to integrate Creativity and Innovation Workshops with sports and (Winter) Sauna for foreigners. It is a long term plan.  (Summer is definitely time for crazy ideas and I am waiting for winter to make them true :-)

New Open Content & Open Innovation Research Project

Last Wednesday (15th June 2006), two projects:
Gamespace (Mobile Game Evaluation) and Parteco (Particatory Content
Creation and Open Innovation) were accepted by Tekes (http://www.tekes.fi). This was a happy day for my research unit, the Hypermedia Laboratory - University of Tampere :-)

This Tekes-decision enables me to work as a researcher next 20 months in the Parteco project. Some continuity! My project duties will include innovation management IT research, idea market research, group creativity research and global expert Delphi interviews on open innovation.

I will be back in open innovation research topics in my future posts.

" There are too many ideas held by people who don't work for you to ignore "
(Chesbrough, 2003)

Project initiative: Innovation Process, IT and Management

I am relieved. With my colleagues from different organisations, we made it and submitted on Friday 1st of October the project proposal to Tekes ( National Technology Agency of Finland).   

The proposal has a link to my on-going PhD work as well.

Let's see what decision makers will say about the proposal ;-)