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10 young entrepreneurs who didn’t let age hold them back
HT @NathanVigil
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The 30 second habit with a lifelong impact — STARTUPS + WANDERLUST + LIFE HACKING — Medium
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The Case for Teaching Ignorance – The New York Times
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She wanted her students to recognize the limits of knowledge and to appreciate that questions often deserve as much attention as answers.
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in recent years scholars have made a convincing case that focusing on uncertainty can foster latent curiosity, while emphasizing clarity can convey a warped understanding of knowledge.
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Discovery is not the neat and linear process many students imagine, but usually involves, in Dr. Firestein’s phrasing, “feeling around in dark rooms, bumping into unidentifiable things, looking for barely perceptible phantoms.”
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Michael Smithson, a social scientist at Australian National University who co-taught an online course on ignorance this summer, uses this analogy: The larger the island of knowledge grows, the longer the shoreline — where knowledge meets ignorance — extends. The more we know, the more we can ask. Questions don’t give way to answers so much as the two proliferate together. Answers breed questions. Curiosity isn’t merely a static disposition but rather a passion of the mind that is ceaselessly earned and nurtured.
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Why It’s Imperative to Teach Entrepreneurship | Psychology Today
Entrepreneurship can be taught using a similar scaffolding of skills, building upon our natural ability to imagine:
– Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist.
– Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.
– Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.
– Entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas by inspiring others’ imagination.
Using this framework, educators at all levels can help young people engage with the world around them and envision what might be different; experiment with creative solutions to the problems they encounter; hone their ability to reframe problems in order to come up with unique ideas; and then work persistently to scale their ideas by inspiring others to support their effort.
HT @MeghanCureton
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belearnspacea › 1fPersonal Learning Graphs (PLeG)33
HT Thomas Steele-Maley
Personal Learning Graphs (PLeG) http://t.co/HXLHGyQW2s via @gsiemens cc: @boadams1 @GeoMouldey @dwenmoth @rogre
Five Practicable Skills to Innovation @MViDiploma #iDiploma #iDNA
If you wanted to be healthier, what would you do? Most likely, you would regularly practice some behaviors such as eating with nutrition in mind, sleeping significantly, exercising cardiovascularly and with resistance or weight training, etc.
If you wanted to be more innovative and develop your creative capacities as a leader of positive change, what would you do?
From “The Innovator’s DNA,” Dyer, Gregersen, Christensen, Harvard Business Review, December, 2009:
But how do they do it? Our research led us to identify five “discovery skills” that distinguish the most creative executives: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. We found that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50% more time on these discovery activities than do CEOs with no track record for innovation. Together, these skills make up what we call the innovator’s DNA. And the good news is, if you’re not born with it, you can cultivate it.
How are you creating the conditions in which you can cultivate your innovator’s DNA through practice of associating, observing, questioning, experimenting, and networking? How are you beginning your 100-hour knack? How are you discovering the problems and opportunities that you are uniquely capable of identifying and addressing?
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Written as continued provocation and encouragement for capacity building happening @MVPSchool’s and @MVIFI’s Innovation Diploma
Art of Tinkering MOOC – ScribbleBots #TinkeringMOOC
In week three of the Coursera-Exploratorium Art of Tinkering MOOC, I made my first ScribbleBot. A hobby motor, some kind of base, markers, and a battery combine to make visible the motion of a motored object.
WEEKLY ACTIVITY: Make a few scribbling machines of your own, using our video and Activity Guide [link removed]. Try different materials, personalize your machine, and experiment freely! Then post your photos (and videos!) in this week’s forum [link removed] and tag them #tinkeringmooc on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so they appear on our social media wall. We can’t wait to see all the variations you come up with!
Making the ScribbleBot was very fun and easy – to get started with a first iteration. And the real fun and learning increased when I began to play with the variables of the bot to see what effects the alterations would have. As my sons joined me in my investigation and iterations, they began to make hypotheses about what would happen if they used different materials and designs for the bot.
REFLECTION QUESTION: Based on your experience in the class so far, which learning dimensions and indicators from the framework [link removed] are easy to see, and which are harder to pinpoint or recognize? Share your thoughts in the discussion forum [link removed].
So, I am removing the links from the Coursera weekly prompts because they lead to information behind the Coursera portal. However, the Learning Dimensions tool is Google-able, and there is a nice, short piece about the instrument on Lego Engineering.
During my time in the class so far, I think the following dimensions are easier to see:
- Engagement – Spending time in Tinkering activities; Displaying motivation or investment through affect or behavior
- Initiative and Intentionality – Persisting to achieve goals in the problem space
- Social Scaffolding – Requesting or offering help in solving problems; Inspiring new ideas or approaches; Physically connecting to others’ works
- Development of Understanding – Expressing a realization through affect or utterances; Offering explanation(s) for a strategy, tool or outcome; Striving to understand
For me, the more challenging dimensions to observe and notice explicitly are:
- Initiative and Intentionality – Setting one’s own goals; Seeking and responding to feedback (environmental); Taking intellectual risks or showing intellectual courage [unless person is self-talking or sharing aloud among the community of tinkerers]
- Development of Understanding – Applying knowledge
I actually think it’s fabulous how many of these (which are more fully understood when looking at the “descriptors” on the tool) are directly observable. When the learning dimensions are observable, I think the ability to provide growth-mindset coaching and questioning and encouragement strengthens for the facilitator.
TINKERING JOURNAL PROMPT: Record your response to this week’s reflection question, as well as two or three different responses from the discussion forum in your design journal. In what ways are the responses helpful to your educational practice?
[Posted directly to Coursera discussion.]
And I loved this video lesson from Dr. Edith Ackermann, who I was able to meet at the New York Association of Independent Schools Annual Conference for Assistant Heads, where she and I both presented/facilitated.
“Play is children’s most serious work.”
“Playfulness is a counterpoint to curiosity.”
“Playfulness is about allowing yourself to leap…as if when you knew that when you do that you come to see things anew.”
“In playful environment you feel safe enough to explore ideas that would otherwise be risky.”
Dr. Ackermann’s description of the importance of the eye also significantly resonates with me and all that I am working on relative to curiosity and observation journals…connected with the Tim Brown idea that “Innovation begins with an eye.” That it’s not merely simple trial and error, but it is something more sophisticated, rooted in advanced observation of the eye to gather feedback and apply that learning to enhanced iterations.
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On Tuesday, I will open a meeting with division heads and heads of learning and innovation by facilitating creation of ScribbleBots. I plan to come back later to this post and add images/notes from that experience.
TK
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Art of Tinkering MOOC – Circuits #TinkeringMOOC (Tinkering Journal Post #1, August 22, 2015.)
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HT @JimCollinsTA
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The Rise Of The Intrapreneur | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
HT Pam Ambler
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But like a growing number of employees called intrapreneurs, he chose to start something new in his existing company and innovate from within.
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This isn’t employees trying to do better at their existing jobs or move up the ladder; this is them wanting to create something new that doesn’t currently exist.
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“We would create these safe spaces for intrapreneurs to come together and share their stories about working in the corporate world because they are going against the grain so often.”
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millennials want things companies aren’t currently giving them: autonomy, creativity, and meaning. But if companies give their talent something to focus on, projects to own, they will stay and help their company move forward.
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“You have to reprogram these goliath organizations and make their cultures be more future friendly—that’s the role of the intrapreneurs.”
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The future belongs to individuals and companies who embrace the entrepreneurial spirit, whether that is inside or outside a company
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fundamental question is what is going to have people get motivated and inspired to be in their highest contribution. What is going to get you fired up to do what you came here to do? And I think the more that all of us are asking those questions and engaging in those opportunities, the better we are all going to be.”
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