Getting out of Higher Ed Hell

When we're stuck in Higher Ed Hell, it's all we can do to show up. We hope learning happens by exposure to expertise like some form of contagion we can catch infectiously. Unfortunately, what does rub off is incompetence, ineffectiveness and ineptitude. We learn from the example of instructors being preachy, hypocritical and incapable of inducing realizations. We experience the content being delivered as useless and boring. The big challenge becomes paying attention since that is so difficult.

We also seek to keep learning to an absolute minimum in Higher Ed Hell.  We're functioning in survival mode. We aim to cut our losses, manage our damage and reduce our exposure to further abuse. We cannot handle learning more than the minimum while our plate is so extremely full with troubled locations and schedules for learning. It mostly seems like the good stuff happens in places we're not at times when we cannot show up.

In this place, we cannot be self-motivated to learn more, take on challenges or act more confident. Showing up is an act of desperation which makes getting value out of educational experiences seem like a luxury. We're extremely dependent on the imposed structure of authority figures to define what we have to do by when. We cannot judge whether the requirements are useful or beneficial as our own frame of reference lacks the prerequisite power and self confidence to choose wisely.

Our choice of  a college major in Higher Ed Hell offers no employment prospects in our "chosen field". Employers will show no interest in what we studied or where we went to school. All that matters is that we walked away with a diploma. College is regarded in the "real world" as an obstacle course to get through that proves the graduate has the ability to solve problems with showing up. We will end up in hierarchies where the work is routine and policy compliance gets rewarded.

We have no clue that there are higher levels to the game we're playing. We don't see that we're sabotaging our satisfaction, taking serious hits for no good reason or getting further damaged by playing at this level. We're coping with the adversity and hoping we hang in there long enough to get a degree. To get out of these hellish circumstances into a higher level of the Higher Ed Game, different gameplay needs to be executed. There are seven major accomplishments required in an effective exit strategy from Higher Ed Hell:

1. Cultivating a positive self concept to replace feeling like "nobody significant" who was devoid of self respect. 
2. Complicating the dashboard readouts of locations and schedules provided by the administration with one's own locations and schedules.
3. Jump starting a Power Game within the Higher Ed Game which uses the accumulation of personal power to replace self-pity, victim stories and solicitations of commiseration.
4. Exercising the newly acquired power to solve problems with one's own schedule and location in order to have bigger blocks of time, closer proximities and shorter travel to destinations.
5. Adding two more locked readouts to one's internal dashboard which then monitors upcoming tests and resulting grades being given for machine-like performance.
6. Getting caught up in the highly addictive extrinsic motivations and rewards of the "grade game" to improve one's GPA and college transcript.
7. Choosing what to study in college to increase one's newly invested power supply and improve performance indicated by tests and grades.

These seven prerequisites empower any of us to play at the next level of the Higher Ed game. It rubs off on the faculty, administrators, parents and colleagues. It becomes obvious that some authentic learning is happening from playing the game well, if not from what is actually getting taught, tested and graded. Getting more out of the college experience and expense becomes attainable. The game has gone far beyond just showing up and hoping learning happens by exposure.

Welcome to Higher Ed Hell

Welcome to Higher Ed Hell. This is Level One of a four level game out here in the real world. As the game begins, you are only tracking two things on the dashboard in your mind: location and schedule. Both are given to you and your job is to show up in the right place at the right time. You have no control over where or when learning happens. Learning is supposed to occur by showing up where teaching is happening and cannot happen where no one is giving you assignments and covering the material in one way or another.

This is called Higher Ed Hell because of how much can go wrong, make you miserable and give you experiences of feeling powerless. The four key features of this first level of the game involve what you are tracking on your mental dashboard. The location and schedule of where you have to show up may be:

• Extremely inconvenient: giving you a long commute, travel expenses, and difficulty with parking and finding a seat once you get there
• Frustratingly inaccessible: offering only a short window when you're not available, requiring facilities that are closed at night, setting up appointments when you're somewhere else
• Profoundly restrictive: dictating what is a late arrival, inexcusable delay, insufficient attendance or incorrect location for your learning by compliance
• Excessively scattered: forcing you to scramble between distant buildings on campus, between a main and satellite campus or between physical classrooms and synchronous chats online

All this will have the following effects which make this level of play worthy of the title: Higher Ed Hell

1. The stress of all this torment can induce many of the twelve negative effects on your brain function. 
2. The pressures can seriously impair your ability to be helpful to others.  
3. You will find you are incapable of getting creative in any but the primal sense
4. The value you get from this so-called education will be minimal at best and completely useless more often
5. Your self motivation will vanish leaving you dependent on imposed penalties to motivate you to show up
6. Persistent problems with your attention, retention and commitment will get worse as you discover ways to escape the pain, indulge your urges and sabotage your education
7. You will get mislabeled, stereotyped as incompetent and presumed to be incapable of success in higher ed

Getting out of this level involves several challenges I'll explore in a forthcoming post to this blog.

A game of seeing

The game I'm envisioning for gamifying Higher Ed has four levels in it. This game differs from most ARG's (Alternate Reality Games) that dwell entirely in the physical world. Conventional ARG's only gamify levels of attainment and cultivated attributes, not levels of spaces and places. Thus most ARG's focus on missions to discover, narratives to piece together and puzzles to solve collaboratively.

There is a place you go to change how you're seeing your situation. It does not change what physical evidence you are seeing objectively. In this place, you change how you see the objective evidence subjectively. You alter your selective perceptions and construed attributions. You reframe what you're seeing with a different outlook, perspective or lens.

This is the place where any game of seeing gets played. This place has been called your inner world or your mind. It's a place for all your daydreaming, fantasizing and imagining. It's also a place for replaying and reconsidering what happened in light of new insights, perspectives and possibilities. It's a place to run through a scenario or mentally practice what you will soon say or do. Sometimes this is a place to experience being haunted by horrific memories, dreadful forecasts or paranoid interpretations of interactions with others.

When we go to this place, we can see opportunities to explore that previously appeared as dangerous threats too be avoided. We can see ways out of our comfort zone of habitual seeing out onto skinny branches of unfamiliar perspectives. We can adopt an optimistic outlook that welcomes challenges, new experiences and games to play well. In this place, we can change how we keep score, what we monitor continually and what facets we regard as "mission critical". It's as if we have a dashboard in this inner place we can update in a level of play and upgrade as we change levels.

Competing with the Higher Ed Game

The Higher Ed Game is one of four. Each game demands investments which take away from the other games. To advance in the Higher Ed Game, it's necessary to cut back or avoid investments in the other games. Here are the competing games which interfere with advancing in the Higher Ed Game for most players:

1. The Family Game demands time, energy and attention from players. There may be much younger or older family members in need. There may be a spouse or siblings who maintain high-maintenance relationships. Family members may schedule lots of activities. A well-meaning parent may start flying around like a helicopter parent. The player may be a single parent while attending college. Any of these facets of the Family Game can undermine advancing to advanced levels in the Higher Ed Game.
2. The Work Game also consumes the time, energy and attention from players. Work may demand large blocks of time, lots of stamina or massive amounts of concentration. Work may be the opposite of a no-brainer that can get done on very little sleep which means time away from work needs to be spent getting rested. The size of paychecks may vary with how many hours get worked which rewards time away from the other games that don't pay monetarily. 
3. The Social Game is usually high maintenance. Friends make it known when they feel neglected, ignored or abandoned. Romantic interests don't take kindly to excuses involving work, school work or family obligations. Relationships with people who feel clingy, needy or lonely result in spending lots of hang time with them. Social activities usually involve lots of advance planning to agree on a time, place and roster of people involved. Conversations go on endlessly about who just said what to whom regarding which issue. When socializing includes lots of partying into late hours and alcohol, the next day is eliminated from advancing in any of the four games.

Each game has four levels of play as I'm envisioning all this. We only have eight potential investments we can make in those sixteen levels. We can play at the top of our game in two by totally neglecting the other two. It's far more likely we'll play at level one or two in three games and break into a higher level in only one game. There's no escaping the other three games when playing the Higher Ed Game. Managing those investments comprise the meta-game for advancing beyond Higher Ed Hell by devoting more resources to learning from college experiences.

Gamifying higher ed

Higher ed can currently be viewed as an alternate reality game. It offers every student, faculty member and administrator ways to play, upgrade their dashboards and level up in the game. I've been messing around with ways to make this game more fun, immersive and valuable. I'll be sharing what I've come up with in this next series of blog posts.

The game begins in Higher Ed Hell. It's living hell for the students, faculty and administrators. Each player has the side effect of making the others miserable as a result of what's missing in the gameplay. I'm imagining the students start the game with only two readouts on their dashboards: Locating and Scheduling. Both are locked and cannot yet be upgraded or revised. In order to move out of this entry level, the player needs to acquire two more readouts on their dashboards: Testing and Grading.

In order to level up beyond the second level, these four readouts must be unlocked. This will empower substantial innovations to where learning is located, how it's scheduled, tested and graded. Two other readouts must be added to a student player's dashboard: Credentialing and Advising.

The highest level gets accessed by adding a seventh readout to the dashboard: Staffing. Once unlocked at the top of this game, who the player learns from gets thoroughly reinvented.

In each level, an experience of making changes to one's own location, schedule, etc. -- precedes changing what the readout monitors. The initial process of making personal changes cultivates the prerequisite power, confidence and efficacy to make changes in a dashboard readout. When first entering each level, the player experiences getting gamed by the system. This sets up getting how the game thinks, challenges and rewards the players. Learning how to succeed serves game play as well as generalizing to other social and economic contexts.

Each level is an experience design which delivers a spectrum of consequences for conduct in that level. Learning from those consequences to move forward and play better eventually puts higher ed in its proper place. The big institution morphs from an imposing police state to a set of useful tools and resources for personal and collaborative advancement.

to be continued ...

College for a healthy economy

As I've explored before, attending college is bad for our brains. So what?

• Isn't high school bad for our brains too? Yes!
• Won't the employment for college graduates be as bad for their brains as college courses and college prep was for them? Yes!
• Isn't college as bad for the brains of faculty and administrators as for the students? Yes!
• Isn't it good to get adapted to environments that are bad for our brains in order to benefit from steady employment and high incomes? That depends!

As I've pondered this "bad for our brains" issue further, it seems it's inevitable for a toxic portion of our economy that machines high volumes of consistent outcomes. The pressure to deliver reliable results on a committed schedule creates employment that is bad for our brains. Anyone who plans on a career machining these results needs to get adapted to all that debilitating adversity in college.

There are other facets of our economy that can be good for our brains. I expect these sectors to grow in the near future while those which crank out consistent products, services and programming fade from their preeminent position. These healthy facets of the economy:

• provide individualized attention to each beneficiary
• employ self structuring talent to fill continually changing roles
• solve problems as they arise in the context of that beneficiary
• rely on the intrinsic motivation and good judgement of each caregiver
• work with the beneficiaries in collaborative, peer2peer arrangements
• produce new innovations that happily vary from previous ones
• involve continual growth, learning and personal development for each participant

Preparation for contributing to this economy requires college experiences that are good for brains. They need as much preliminary adaptation to prepare for future healthy employment as those getting inured to debilitating adversity. This sector will redefine what is meant by the term "healthy economy" from capital flows, trade balances and employment levels to economic activities that are equally good for our brains as for our financial measures.

Becoming well rounded

There's an entire industry of conventional content delivery that imagines we are not even slightly well rounded. This industry includes textbook and every other kind of print and educational media publisher. Preachy professors and pedantic academics of every stripe count among the members of this industry. Content delivery includes anyone else in a position to tell us what we need to know and how to think about it.

I imagine everyone is already well rounded even if we're not all "well educated". We all have wide and varied experiences with different food, music, locations, people and more. We've got tons of experience with caring for other people, pets, plants and other living things. We've been on the receiving end of lots of attention from others and engaged in changing how we get treated. We've started many and completed some projects, creative endeavors and social pursuits. We received boatloads of feedback from people, results of our efforts and our own self-assessments. We've all tried many things that did not work out as we expected, hoped or intended. We've all learned from our failures, setbacks and surprising successes. We've taken the time to upgrade our explanations of how the world works and our predictions for what happens as a result of our actions. We've learned to keep secrets, earn others' respect, maintain trust levels, use honesty and much more of the complexity of relating to other people. We've all got more facets than anyone can count.

In a world that works for us, we would bring all these well-rounded experiences to bear when we are learning something new. We would not be learning something to become well rounded. We would presume we already are and use that as the basis to assimilate new information and experiences. We would naturally compare what we've just received to what we already know and recall the new stuff by its tie ins to our well roundedness.

Convention content deliverers cannot adopt this outlook of mine. Each member is too focused on his/her particular expertise and the material to be covered. None of our well-roundedness counts in their world. It's does not deal with the subject matter. It's not in the form of respected expertise. It appears unrelated to the content they deliver. In the world of well-roundedness, conventional content deliverers seem to be flat as pancakes and as shallow as puddles.

I know from my own experiences that preparing content to deliver is hard work. My mind goes into task mode tin order to maintain intense focus and shut out distractions. On this basis, I presume that conventional content deliverers are consumed by binary thinking. They rule out the possibility of everyone already being well rounded in terms of the clear contrast between work and play, experts and amateurs, or knowledge and ignorance.

Thus it is very unlikely that anyone could become well-rounded by consuming the content delivered by experts. Getting seen as "not already well rounded" cannot help this endeavor. Getting treated as uninformed and lacking expertise creates labels, profiling and stereotypes that work against well-roundedness. Getting the content deliverers' own "flat and shallow" condition projected onto us consumers of their content can only undermine well roundedness.

With that preface said, my advice for becoming well-rounded is to realize everyone already is exactly that. When we accept that and let that serve us, we will become even more well rounded, resourceful and responsive. Imagine that!

When do we help others?

In order to realize a much lower cost to higher ed which producing much higher quality educations, those formerly known as students will need to be very helpful to each other on countless occasions. These slides look at twenty different occasions for us to be help to others.

When do we help others

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Locating where you're at

When reinventing higher ed to provide higher quality at a lower cost, each participant will be interested in where others are at right now. Here's a look at that.

Locatingyou

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Considering people problems

When people are behaving badly, there are four major ways we can see what's occurring. Each offers some benefits at a cost. There are no easy answers when it comes to resolving people problems. Here's a quick review of the four outlooks we typically deploy when facing people problems:

Preoccupied outlook: When we've already got a full plate, another problem seems like too much to ask of us. We run the risk of getting blamed for failing to get involved, taking charge or insisting on finding a solution. On the other hand, we can hope our benign neglect will serve the situation well. There's always the chance that:

• the problem will work itself out over time as participants become more resourceful
• the people involved with get tired of the problem and change their conduct
• the problem will get worse and force others to fix it
• the problem is a passing phase of development the people will outgrow

Pre-emptive outlook: When the problem cannot be ignored it becomes our problem to solve. It's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the people from the problems they're causing and enduring. We may pay a price for procrastinating out of fear or taking too little action too late out of hesitation. We take pre-emptive action before the people problem:

• gets worse from neglect or letting it get further out of control
• becomes more widespread as others imitate the instigator or join in the antics 
• gets more firmly rooted in the cultural norms or habitual reaction patterns
• becomes endured with resignation, cynicism or despair

Perceptive outlook: When a people problem persists, it becomes inviting to look at it more deeply. The surface evidence must be symptomatic of a deeper set of intertwined problems. Dealing directly with the obvious problem can become part of the problem, make it worse on the surface or even feed it's hidden dynamics. The perceptive outlook changes the definition of the problem to be addressed:

• as if the people are in pain and acting out their frustrations
• as if the problem is sending unspoken signals, crying for help or calling attention to an overlooked situation
• as if the problem is compensating for another extreme condition that needs to be brought into balance
• as if the problem functions as a way to escape a history of failure, abuse or chronic misfortune

Process outlook: When a people problem thrives on any attention, it's time to foil it's plot with non-resistence. We run the risk of well-intnetioned actions blowing up in our face. The situation presents unusual opportunities to give the participants in the problem:

• permission to persist with their efforts until something better comes to mind
• portraits of their good intentions, desire to make a difference and history of successful accomplishments
• protection from others who book them on guilt trips, label them as bad people or frame them as enemies
• pressure to choose wisely among additional options, criteria or agendas

Whichever outlook we choose, the people problem will become our teacher. We will learn from the problem what works with it in particular. We will find errors in our habitual outlook and reasons to explore some of the others. We will get graded on our outlook by the people problem giving us high or low marks for our intervention. We will experience the freedom of taking a practice test to prepare us to try a different outlook the next time around.

Dashboards for power games

Imagine we live in a world of intertwined power games. Every player with accumulated power has a dashboard for monitoring their play action and outcomes of their maneuvers. As each player's power evolves, his/her dashboard upgrades as well. As I've pondered the shifting power balances in the Middle East this week, here's how I've envisioned the changing dashboards for the entrenched leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. There are obvious parallels to corporate moguls, political titans and the top positions within institutional hierarchies:

When power has been entrenched for decades, the readout on the dashboard can simply monitor the player's power supply. There may be slight, occasional fluctuations of supply of power which is to be expected. There is no cause for alarm. The entrenched power is neither questioned, challenged or exposed as abusive. There would be no need to watch the dashboard closely as the readout shows the same indication for decades. This dashboard could create mayhem due to its profound disconnection from changing situations.

When a power struggle ensues, the dashboard for the power game needs an immediate upgrade. The player needs to monitor his/her exercise of power as well as the prior supply of power. Situations call for reminding others who's the boss by pulling their chain with intimidation tactics, implied threats and manipulations of evidence. A readout would show how successfully those maneuvers fortified entrenched power, restored others' powerlessness, shot the messenger and convinced others to back off.

When entrenched power has been lost to constituencies, citizenry, customers or marketplaces, the dashboard needs to monitor the player's influence. The exercise of power would show a loss of influence on this new addition to the dashboard. The practice of transparency, empathy and acknowledgement would all move the needle toward the plus side on the influence monitor. Unilateral concessions or obvious sacrifices of unilateral power over others would make the needle jump in the desired direction.

When power sharing emerged from the engagement with others, the dashboard needs a final upgrade. The voters, problem solvers and citizen activists would see the same readout on their personal dashboards as well. Everyone would be tracking mutual empowerment. Interactions that yielded mutual respect, benefit and reciprocation would show up favorably on this readout. It would be clear to everyone how to move toward greater democratization and synchronous innovation by watching this dial on shared dashboards.

As I'm envisioning these power games, the changing of the dashboard would be part of the game. The dashboard would be more than a readout of the play action. Achieving a dashboard upgrade would outrank mere advances in the metrics monitored by the current indicators. The condition of the dashboard becomes fair game in the games played with entrenched power.

Self-reinforcing cycles

There are two kinds of self-reinforcing cycles. The more common in human endeavors are self-destructive while those in nature are robust, resilient and sustainable. The future of higher ed depends on the migration out of human patterns to biomimicry of those natural self-reinforcing cycles. We cannot develop sustainable strategy drivers when we lack awareness of what Peter Senge called The Fifth Discipline and Gregory Bateson called our Mind in Nature. We've got to learn to take our models based on causal arrows and close the loop to include the feedback, side effects and hidden consequences of taking action.

When we tell people what to say, do or think, they will either comply or defy our domineering advice. We do the telling as if it does not come back to haunt us or have lasting effects on others. Our model includes a causal arrow of making others do what they're told to do. The others will become dependent or counter-dependent on getting told by us, contrary to our predictive model. They will discount or dismiss their inherent abilities to say what's on their minds, do what situations call for and think for themselves. They will wait to be told rather than take initiative and responsibility. Then when the cat is away, the mice will play games of retaliation. The domineering one will find the others have become "high maintenance" and in need of being told everything. There seems to be no escape to this self-reinforicng cycle. There are no sustainable dynamics amidst this considerable destruction of all the participants' flexibility and effective contributions to the whole.

When we ask people what are they trying to accomplish, what options are they considering and what considerations are on their minds, they will respond to our queries.  Our model includes enduring effects on others. They will become more reflective, self aware and resourceful. They will use their timeouts to challenge their assumptions, process their previous attempts and rethink their strategies. They will take ownership and look after the common interests with their big picture. This system is becoming more resilient and sustainable as power is shared, processes work with the participants and collaborations become productive.

When we "make like a tree and leave" human endeavors, we function within a forest of reciprocities. Our model contains countless loops. We respond to what's needed, requested, missing and changed. We enjoy others doing the same for us. We find each is contributing in their unique ways to their locality in the whole system. Everyone's innovations are synchronous with the local and systemic dynamics. The effects of all these reciprocities creates a highly resilient and sustainable self-reinforcing system.

Strategy drivers in higher ed

This morning I've been making connections in my mind between all the facets of reinventing higher ed and the strategy drivers of existing institutions. In the patterns I've recognized, there are two widely adopted strategy drivers that cannot:

• be good for our brains
• make degree programs much more affordable by providing higher quality educations at a lower cost
• redefine school work for students and redesign jobs for faculty members and administrators
• disrupt their current business models or established incentives for academic excellence

There are two other strategy drivers which support meeting all four of these challenges creatively and resourcefully. Thus the choice of strategy drivers becomes crucial to any model of reformation, renewal or replacement of the bastions of higher ed. Here's a brief look at those four strategy drivers:

1. Quantitative strategy drivers dwell on the metrics as measures of success, bases for prioritizing and frameworks for addressing problems. These drive the spending on expansion, reallocating resources to accommodate larger enrollment and redirecting efforts away from solving isolated problems. These drivers put faith in objective, historical data which steer the enterprise by looking ahead through the rear view mirror. 
2. Qualitative strategy drivers fixate on dimensions of competitive superiority, extrinsic valuation and attributes that command premium prices. These drive the spending on prestigious acquisitions, reputation-building enhancements and investments to upstage rival institutions. These drivers put faith in subjective rankings, comparisons and accolades which steer the enterprise by looking at itself in the mirror to preen and posture itself more impressively. 
3. Intrinsic value strategy drivers dwell on how the customer is always right, beauty is located in the eye of the beholder and trust emerges from transparency. These drive the spending on listening to customers, discovering their unmet needs and bringing solutions to their contexts where the problems occur. These drivers put faith in feedback from customers' experience of the delivery system, desires for changes and insights into what's missing which steer the enterprise to become more responsive. 
4. Resilient strategy drivers dwell on the ways self-reinforcing cycles becomes self-sustaining and spinoff benefits for all the participants. These drive the spending on modeling the complexity, capturing the recursive dynamics and reversing vicious cycles into virtuous loops. These drive the spending in on initiating compassion, working with collaborators and responding to inherent requests which steer the enterprise to create ecologies where everyone wins without exploitation. 

Both the intrinsic value and resilient strategy drivers function far more resourcefully and creatively than the other two. The bring out the best in the people involved which spills over into the lives of others impacted indirectly. The cumulative effects of these beneficial dynamics yields the wonderful effects on brains, affordability, job design and the reinvention of higher ed.

More ways colleges are bad for our brains

Last year, my most read post was How colleges are bad for our brains. I included seven facets which have since grown to a dozen. Here the five new ones with the original seven republished below.

8. When we're we're faced with injustices, we take the higher moral ground to restore fairness from our own viewpoint. Nowadays it seems unjust to be forced to pay so much attention to lecturers, to ignore our handhelds streaming with our friends latest news and to single task some meaningless assignment. Our brains get busy figuring out how to restore fairness by ignoring the professor, sneaking looks at handhelds and multitasking while dealing with stupid tasks.
9. When we're overloaded with too much information, our minds go blank. We handle the excessive inputs by shutting down the processing what what we're hearing, seeing or getting asked for in response. We fail to pay attention and appear to space out at a time when it's crucial to absorb everything. We then lose confidence in our minds' abilities to function under academic pressures and assume we fail at other classroom challenges.
10. When we're faced with extremely consistent, familiar and predictable situations, our minds flip onto auto-pilot. We take a load off our massive glucose burner (neocortex) that thinks about anything inconsistent, unfamiliar and unpredictable. We rely on our pattern recognition abilities to know when there will be no surprises and when it's safe to tune out our surroundings. We then appear to be space cadets sitting in college classrooms wasting our time, money and energy being there.
11. When we're overtaxing our memories, our minds conserve storage space by discarding useless information. We forget what seemed pointless, irrelevant or useless at the time we encountered it. However, we easily remember what we did that worked for us, got the intended results or proved to be accurate. We also remember what proved to be waste of time and avoid that in the future. From college courses , we remember what we did and what we got, not what was said or assigned.
12. When we're expected to overt-think or overanalyze a challenge, we lose touch with our pent-up feelings. We assume we can be Spock-like and identify with pure rationality. When our pent-up feelings erupt, our minds quickly invent rationalizations, justifications and coverups to maintain our pretense of rationality. Our inner turmoil escalates under this regime of repression and usually becomes mental or physical problems which are impossible to ignore. We deny we've got those problems until they ruin our lives and force us to dropout of college.

1. When we're exposed to excessive expertise, we learn to act helpless and then become morbidly dependent on authority figures. This works for submitting to the alpha dog in our pack, but not for knowledge work, creativity, and many other roles that call for our personal resourcefulness.
2. When we're put under prolonged pressure, we suffer crippling anxiety. We lose physical coordination, mental agility, immune responses and restful sleep. We remain in a state of agitation which we cannot shake off, sleep off or mood alter away. This is our fight/flight response gone awry because the dangerous predators seem to be constantly present.
3. When we get framed as deviant, defective or deficient, we unconsciously buy into the diagnosis and play the part. The way we get seen, labeled, talked to and evaluated becomes a self fulfilling prophesy. While this worked to maintain safety in numbers and avoid getting kicked out of our tribe, it's not helpful when cultivating our best performance and unique abilities.
4. When we're subjected to excessive control and guilt trips, we over-compensate in order to restore our emotional balance. We may lash out at others or take out our frustrations on ourselves. Displacing these anxieties gives us urges to overindulge in drinking, shopping, gambling and many other escapes.  While this keeps us from totally losing our minds, it sabotages our relationships, reputations and self respect in the process.
5. When we're exposed to bad examples, we imitate them regardless of their effectiveness. We may easily become hypocrites, incompetent technicians or bullies if those examples get paraded in front us. This learning by osmosis enables us, as infants, to add twenty new words to our vocabulary every day and to mimic our parents behaviors which meets with their approval. It does not safeguard us against internalizing gibberish or dysfunctional exemplars. 
6. When losses, setbacks and other misfortunes do not make sense to us, we get devastated and drown in despair.. We are prone to long bouts of depression when we're faced with a barrage of meaninglessness incidents. This works to prevent us from digging a deeper hole for ourselves or from foolishly chasing after rainbows.  However, it does not generate the meaning that's missing or define new directions for us to pursue.
7. When we're rewarded handsomely for our efforts, we lose our self motivation, creativity and long term perspective. We become addicted to the extrinsic rewards, greedy for more and desperate to maximize our earnings. This works to motivate our stockpiling food for a long winter, but not for taking others' interests to heart. 

Expanded view of a dashboard

My recent posts about dashboards are getting more readers than any others recently. Here's an extended version of the chart I introduced in Finding places for dashboards. This chart includes the more recent explorations into innovation.

Enough space for innovating

It takes lots of space for innovating. Anyone of us who's tried to get creative under excessive pressure can testify to the need for space. Two of the last few books I've read had great opening chapters, but quickly faded into boring, repetitive, wordy passages. I can easily imagine the authors became very constrained by publication deadlines which cramped their style severely.

We can also suffer from too much space. We need constraints to bring out our best ideas. With too much freedom, our thoughts are scattered and fretful. We become like the cowboy that jumped on all four horses and rode off in every direction.

These extremes give us criteria for design of infrastructures for innovating: the amount of space has to be just right. Not too much and not too little space. The Goldilocks Principle applies here. It's difficult to find this middle bowl of porridge. It's easier to neglect those assigned with creative endeavors in hopes they will do better free of interference and micromanaging. When I'm being innovative, I know that I strongly prefer neglect to interference. It's equally easy to provide too much structure with policies, conflicting assignments, restrictive budgets or oppressive schedules. That can be a real innovation killer in my experience.

The space of innovating is not only in the world, it's in our minds. We see more play space when we're in a creative mood, open minded or hanging out in our right brains. We're seeing questions to ask, assumptions to challenge and possibilities to explore. We're not defeated by obstacles, overly impressed by past practices or submissive to authorities. Our minds are inclined to investigate and deviate rather than comply and conform.

So a well designed infrastructure for innovating will help us get into that frame of mind. Rather than start cold, it might help us get into the proper frame of mind. Rather than merely give us space, it could give us challenges, obstacles and mysteries. It could invite into metaphors where meanings change and connections get made, like a blog post that visualizes cowboys on horses, bowls of porridge and spaces for innovating.

Migrating out of methodical innovation

The Methodical Innovation space is a major improvement over the Exceptional Innovation space. When we first exit the anti-social world of rare talents, exploited consumers and self-serving institutions,  it seems like it doesn't get any better than this. We discover an adjacent possible that thrives on:

• design thinking about design challenges and problems, design processes to utilize design tools and methods, design evaluations which apply design criteria and guidelines and design conferences which convene designers from diverse disciplines
• attention to user experiences, to contexts of the low profile customers, to obscure solutions in use and to unstated expectations of end users
• caring for customers, serving others' interests, making a difference in others' lives, responding to implicit requests for support
• discovering fresh opportunities, uncovering unproductive assumptions, rethinking stuck  issues, and reframing antagonistic evidence

To migrate out of this space to the Synchronous Innovation space requires letting go of these considerable advantages found in the Methodical space. The migration to the Synchronous space is neither logical or straightforward. I realized while formulating this write-up that I can only point it out, not take you there. "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon". Here's four ways to look for the Synchronous Innovation space yourself:

• Designing without thinking: In this space, we come up with inspired innovations without making a thing of designing, without taking an elite approach with non-designers and without being in control of the recursive processes. 
• Reversing the experience design: In this space, we experience others' design of our experience as we design their experience. The designing comes full circle or comes back on itself. The first intention to design user experiences becomes the last concern while the last concern of one's own experience becomes the first. 
• Us serving us: In this space, we are caring for caregivers, designing for fellow designers and mediating inputs from mediators like ourselves. There's no end to the awareness of commonalities, mirror reflections and reciprocities weaving every process together. 
• Emergent emptiness: In this space we get that our understanding of emptiness is the booby prize. An grasp of emptiness is not empty. We become empty by not knowing what emptiness is in spite of my making is sound like "not knowing" is something to know. Every moment begins and ends with wonder, innocence and freedom to question appearances.

In this space, everyone is doing what arises in their minds and bodies as the right thing right now. It turns out those things that get done work out perfectly for all living things. These actions provide innovations in situations where more of the same was not working. They change what is stuck and restore balance to extreme situations. They combine what has been polarized and sort out what has become contaminated. It allows for improvements to evolve naturally through mutations, adaptations and experimenting. The participants experience a sense of validation and synchrony in what they are feeling, seeing, understanding and doing.  It gets characterized as "being on a roll" or "being in the flow".  Living this way is highly resilient and sustainable for the full range of micro to macro organisms.

Exploring the contrived spaces

In the space for Exceptional Innovation, the enterprise is a place of turf battles, empire building and separated silos. The parable of the concept car plays out continually. A chain of pain gets perpetuated by the top-down chains of command. Encounters are either troubling or painful. Each breed of expertise works against the others in competition and isolation:

The Design Department formulates a creative possibility. The Marketing Department members tell the Design Department  that only 80% of the features will sell in the current market. The Product Engineering Department  members tell Marketing Department they can give it 80% of what it forecasts as the market demand. The Procurement Department members tell the Engineering Department they can purchase in sufficient quantities 80% of the engineering specs. The Manufacturing Department members tell Procurement that 80% of what they can buy can be machined and assembled fast enough to meet deadlines without compromising quality and cost objectives. The Finance Department members tell Manufacturing that only 80% of what they need to inventory for production will support the targeted profit margins. The cumulative effect of so many departments delivering 80% of the prior requests yields 32.8% of the Design Department's original creative possibility.

This cumulative negative effect gets alleviated by migrating to the Methodical Innovation space. Anti-social working against each other becomes Social working with others. Taking interest in others' interests fuels the changeover from scoreboards to dashboards. The Enterprise gets re-conceived as a collaborative community rather than turf battles between empires. The chains of pain and command get transformed into chains of value. Others appear to be resourceful and provide essential resources for common endeavors. Troubling collisions become beneficial encounters. Formal methods for collaborating become essential to overcome established patterns of contention or anti-social interests.

This migration to the Methodical space is supported by a flock of innovation gurus, authors and consultants. The denizens of the Exceptional Innovation space have fallen under the impression that they are not creative, innovative or resourceful to others. They cannot come up with inspirations in their current frames of mind. They've been framed as somewhat reliable components of machines, not unpredictable organisms continually growing, changing, learning or creating. They need what the flock of innovation gurus bring to the table.

Both the Exceptional and Methodical Innovation spaces are on the contrived side of the four quadrants in my taxonomy of innovation spaces. They makes things happen by coercion, organization or extrinsic motivators. What occurs naturally, spontaneously or serendipitously appears useless and unproductive. The captivity with contrivances seems inescapable. The contrived spaces spawn self confirming evidence which necessitates the perpetuation of exceptional and methodical innovations. Crossing over to the natural innovation side calls for different expectations, change models and support systems , which I'll explore in my next post.

Migrating out of the primal space

Within the space for Primal innovations, there are many easily accessed innovations. We get the urge to do these things without a moral compass, conscience or ethical framework. We override our thinking, hesitation or self restraint to get innovative in these ways:

1. cleverly making trouble for others without getting into trouble ourselves
2. ingeniously getting even with others for dishonoring us or our tribe
3. cunningly concocting schemes to exploit others' naivete, stupidity or inexperience
4. compulsively inventing disguises, ambushes and baited traps to deceive others
5. imaginatively fantasizing wild possibilites, sexual encounters and nightmarish outcomes to conflicts
6. desperately getting resourceful to improve safety, pleasure or survival chances
7. sneakily tricking others into backing off, pitying us or lending us a hand

Each of these innovations feeds the drama around us. They make enemies out of potential allies. They fuel conflicts, arguments and opposing coalitions.They make it more difficult for others to take our side and align with our interests. They provoke others to stop our progress, punish our misconduct and watch our every move. For all these reasons, and many others, there are always lots of incentives to migrate out of the space for primal innovations.

There are two places to go when we're in the space for Primal innovations: either the Synchronous (North) or Exceptional (East) innovation spaces. Both are adjacent possibles to the space for primal innovations. Both share many things in common which create the immediate adjacency to the primal space.

Migrating North: Both primal and synchronous innovation spaces are natural. Both are shared with all kinds of life forms at every scale of existence. Innovating is done without rational, linear and logical thinking. What comes to mind is innovative without trying, struggling or forcing it. Both spaces utilize some kind of emptiness as an essential prerequisite.

Migrating East: Both primal and exceptional innovation spaces are anti-social. Both make a big deal about the differences between insiders/outsiders or us/them. Both take no interest in outsiders' experiences, outlooks or needs. Both endure a bounty of chronic problems that can only be alleviated by social processes with misunderstood outsiders.

Obviously, migrating North to the Synchronous space is preferable. It's also far less likely given how rare the Synchronous space and how prevalent the Exceptional space are currently. The cultural norm sends us "from the frying pan into the fire". There are several big switchovers I've defined when migrating directly to the Synchronous space from the Primal space:

• Switching from a horrible feeling of emptiness in the core of one's being to a wonderful feeling of emptiness that's innocent, clear of fear and open to receive inspirations.
• Switching from trafficking in human emotions to basking in feelings of joy, peace, freedom and timelessness.
• Switching from urges arising from layers of old emotional baggage to inclinations arising from a fresh sense of unity with every living thing
• Switching from inner torments from regretting the past and dreading the future to inner gratitude from immersing oneself in the present moment

I'll continue to explore the design of support systems for these switchovers and this northward migration to the space for Synchronous innovation from the Primal space. I'll report on my findings here as they come to mind.

Enjoying fluid encounters

There's a marvelous Taoist teaching story about two boats colliding. When we see an empty boat drifting toward our own boat in the water, we take no offense when the boats collide. When we see a boat full of rowdies ignoring our warnings about the impending crash, we take offense when the two boats collide. Same boats, same collision, two different reactions.

In the synchronous innovation space I introduced yesterday, we take no offense from colliding with others. We are empty of fears, conditioning and upsets waiting to happen. We either identify with the water that floats all the boats or we see our own emptiness as something we have in common with the approaching boat. We're in synch with everything that is happening and simply go with the flow of the moment. Our emptiness gives rise to innovations that seem to us and others like right conduct, right timing, right proportions and right balance. We are in harmony with the complexity we are witnessing by seeing it simply as it is.

On the right, I've pictured the books I've read about innovation in the past few years. For me, this has unfolded as a stream of fluid encounters. I was not in control of the quantity of books or the sequence I read them in. Often I had started more than one and moved between them fluidly rather than finishing one at a time. What came to my mind from so much spontaneous and serendipitous reading was profoundly fulfilling, delightful and provocative. How I read them proved to be a more profound lesson than what I read in these books. If you're also in this space of synchronous innovations, you may resonate with my story about reading these books fluidly.

If you're in the space of methodical innovations, this bounty of books may appear as a treasure trove of resources. These volumes contain a staggering number of techniques, models and frameworks for becoming more innovative. They offer valuable solutions to problems we encounter with being stuck, blocked, stifled and uninspired. Then I look like a resource who can function very resourcefully having read all these books. You have positioned yourself to become more resourceful by taking advantage of these resources. (The bibliography can be seen here as a pdf Google doc)

If you're in the exceptional innovation space, then this wall of books presents a major obstacle. You may feel intimidated, challenged or put down by this display of power. I may appear exceptional to you and my accomplishment would then seem unattainable to you. By putting this wall of books on a pedestal, you put yourself down for not being as talented an innovator, as capable a problem solver or as ambitious a reader. You would create a troubling collision between fixed traits or evidence of inferiority.

If you're in the primal innovation space, this pile of books could bury you or extinguish your flame. It poses a threat to your safety, composure and ability to concentrate. It could stir up lingering fears, regrets and dread about another collision. There's no doubt you already know what trouble this is to you and your kind. There's no question you know how to handle this encounter. Whatever you do without thinking qualifies as primal innovations.

Back to the space of synchronous innovation space, these other three spaces are empty boats too. They provide enjoyable experiences of fluid encounters when we don't know what to make of them, don't react with any certainty and don't stifle our innocent wonderment as they unfold.

Taxonomy of innovation spaces

As I've reflected more on Steven Johnson's latest book: Where Good Ideas Come From, I've realized his greatest contribution for me is the possibility of fractal patterns. I'm thrilled that patterns of innovation could replicate at the micro and macro scales in nature as well as human endeavors. The final chapter synthesizes the ground covered by the book into a four quadrant model of Individual/Network and Market/Non-Market combinations. I've been striving to come up with a synthesis that includes the cellular and ecosystemic innovations in addition to human endeavors. Yesterday, I succeeded. Here's a first look at my four quadrant taxonomy of Natural/Contrived and Social/Anti-Social combinations of innovations.

• Contrived innovations are unique to humans. They require the use of the neocortex which produces our rational thinking. These innovations organize us into institutions and markets which antagonize tribal and networked endeavors.
• Natural innovations occur throughout all scales of living entities. They evolve into greater diversity, complexity and sustainability. They organize any living forms into tribes and networks which take exception to the premises of institutions and markets. 
• Anti-social innovations improve the chances of survival of a smaller thing against the impositions of the bigger thing. They battle, fight, attack or compete against the opposition. They cohere internally for safety and strength in numbers while keeping out the disruptive, turbulent and systemic influences. 
• Social innovations improve the viability, sustainability and resilience of the entire system. These innovation cooperate with the diversity of others. They integrate the disruptive influences into a dynamic balance of continuous and discontinuous changes. 
• Primal innovations get created without thinking. They naturally emerge from isolated urges to survive and thrive. Primal innovations look out for #1 (anti-social) without regard for context or communities beyond those in close proximity providing safety in numbers.
• Exceptional innovations get created by the rare few with unusual talents, traits, mutations or adaptations. Their survival is precarious without a massive substrate of supportive mechanisms, reliably routinized activities and non-innovative contributions. These "protections for pinnacle achievements"  operate in closed (anti-social) systems defended against outsiders. 
• Methodical innovations get created by combinations of thinking and inspirations induced by clever techniques. They come about by working together with a diversity of others who contribute ideas, conflicting viewpoints, critiques and challenges. They serve the larger community by designing to their varied experiences, serving their differentiated needs and responding to their particular requests.
• Synchronous innovations get created tuning into the flow of right actions, timing, proportions and balance. The emergent phenomenal levels of cooperation and coordination defy what rational thought processes can accomplish. They not only serve the larger community, they are the larger community functioning in sync. 

Most of the books about innovation show how how to function in the methodical space. Books about zen emptiness help us realize the adjacent possible space for synchronous innovation. The concept of wu-wei-wu provokes us to stop striving, become one with our tools and let the result come about by "non-doing doing". We can then flow in tune with the all others diverse endeavors. We won't appear like a flock of birds flying in formation. We will appear like a thriving ecosystem.


Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms) 

Flourishing on emergent platforms

Innovations flourish on emergent platforms. Steven Johnson favors coral reefs (and rain forests) as better metaphors for emergent platforms than the monoculture commons occupied by grazing cattle. This fractal pattern of emergent platforms is my favorite of all those in Where Good Ideas Come From. In nature a few species function as platform creators while most exploit the opportunities and interdependencies on an emergent platform. The platform creators cannot go solo to get their job done. Coral needs algae to fuel their endeavors. Beavers need willow saplings on the adjacent river bank to build their dams. Once a platform emerges, a staggering volume of biodiversity joins the party. The quantity and quality of innovations, adaptations, co-optations and reciprocities are an inspiration to us. The flourishing of creativity we've produced on top of online platforms for our own writing, photos, videos, collaborating, selling, sharing, recycling and socializing -- follows this pattern of nature's bounty.

In nature, pioneer species show up first on a new platform. As they die and decay, fertile soil gets left behind. Several other species take hold which create conditions ripe for even more to get onboard. I suspect the online platforms we're currently using resemble pioneer species. They have sprung up like weeds. The kinds of creativity and innovation on display exhibit "shallow roots and small flowers". The platforms do not yet support deeper involvements and more elaborate replication schema. We're still in an early phase of development,  like when the first railroads were called "iron horses", the first automobiles were called "horseless carriages" and the first radio was called a "Marconi wireless" .

Emergent platforms foster continual balancing between competitive and cooperative impulses. The competition keeps each organism from over-replicating and overrunning the platform space. The cooperation creates ways to recycle, conserve and thrive together with only scarce resources. The complex web of interdependencies results in lots of cross-fertilzation between solutions and innovative uses for cast off by-products. Together, the vitality thriving on or in the platform becomes very resilient and sustainable.

Emergent platforms can be brought to the brink of collapse by reductionistic interference. The removal of wolves of the western U.S. National Parks provides a prime example. Without that apex predator to function as the keystone to the entire ecosystem, mesopredators like the elk and mule deer run rampant. When wolves were reintroduced, the die off of aspen, cottonwoods and willows was reversed. Beaver ponds reappeared with the full panorama of species that thrive on those platforms . Antelope returned to the park in sustainable numbers. Eroding river banks stabilized. Balance was restored throughout the ecosystem by the return of the apex predators.

Once we create platforms for solving social problems, I expect those second generation platforms will function as apex predators. The current global problems with excesses of greed, consumerism, waste, violence, exploitation and abuse will all get balanced. Huge institutions that function like sociopaths or vandals will experience invincible competition from vast webs of cooperation. A staggering quantity and quality of innovations will replace the industrial era systems for delivering products and services unsustainably. These next generation platforms will provide a resilient and sustainable alternative to the current trajectory of human civilization.

Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms) 

Getting psyched for exaptation

In evolution, feathers evolved from providing warmth to mating displays to essential for flying. The structure of feathers evolved evolved from symmetrical with a thin quill to asymmetrical with a sturdy quill to support it's evolved use for flight. The adaptive reuse or co-opting of an original design is called exaptation. This is the fifth fractal pattern in Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From.

Unused tools, spaces and other resources invite exaptation. It's originally intended use seems irrelevant as we ponder what we could do with this opportunity. We also exapt something when we don't have the right tool for the job. This happens for me when I'm traveling light or helping prepare meals in friends' kitchens. I'm not equipped like I am at home in either instance. It becomes necessary to make do with what's available.

To evolve an exaptation, we need to be thinking like the author of 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. We must stop thinking about "what it is" and start thinking about "what it can do". Forms, shapes and physical appearances invite a breed of thinking called functional fixity. We get stuck on the intended use because we can take the thing literally. Functional fluidity explores the differences something can make with its size, weight, location or many other qualities. It no longer seems to us like a thing. It becomes the freedom to make it up as we go along and fodder for our inventiveness.

Technological determinists argue that we get spellbound and used by our tools. We use the default settings as if there's no alternative. We change our lifestyles to accommodate the tool like the explosion of suburbia to accommodate automobiles.  We compromise our choices so the technology can be accommodated like the attention paid to handhelds. We serve it rather than getting it to serve us like the rearrangement of furniture around the big screen TV.

When we've gotten psyched for exaptation, we defy those technological determinists. We subdue those tools to serve our purposes, needs and priorities. We break out of the hypnotic spell, enslavement and implicit subjugation. We master the technique after practicing it endlessly. We become more powerful than the technologies and command them to do different work, achieve different results and yield improved benefits.

Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms) 

Benefiting from errors

Home run hitters strike out more often than base hitters in baseball. Those kinds of errors prove to be very beneficial. But it's costly when it's the pitcher's error of leaving the fastball high in the strike zone or the infield's error of bungling a double play following a grounder to the shortstop. The process of innovating thrives on the kinds of errors that home run hitters make often. Those errors are the fourth fractal pattern in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson.

We get the idea that all mistakes are bad from getting tested in school. Mistakes yield bad grades regardless of whether we were making a stupid mistake or learning about something we had assumed incorrectly. The buildup of the putdowns produces what Carol Dweck calls a "fixed mindset". We switch from making mistakes to being a mistake. We identify with traits of being deficient, defective and incapable of doing the right thing. We coverup mistakes and avoid taking risks to minimize the exposure of these presumed character flaws.

We set ourselves up to benefit from errors when we are the ones giving the test. We test new ideas, tools and methods to see if they work at all, and how well they function if they do. We create experiments to discover which approach gets the best results at the least cost. We learn by establishing formal trials and then realizing what goes wrong, backfires or costs  too much for the small payoff. We need to realize what to expect from something that what does not go according to our plan, predictions or model. We get those benefits by making errors.

When we're benefiting from errors, we've acquired a nuanced view of mistakes I've explored in depth in previous posts:

• We know all mistakes are not the same and discern which kind of mistake we're intending to make, have just made or seem to be avoiding.
• We're wary of doing the wrong thing correctly and failing to watch out for losing games, worthless pursuits and bad habits.
• We're asking very different questions once we see our results than the binary choice between right answer/wrong answer. 

When we're making productive errors, we're in a developmental context. We are a work in progress, not a bundle of traits. We're cultivating new insights, abilities and familiarities. We exhibit what Carol Dweck labels a "Growth Mindset". We're willing to take risks because of the payoffs we realize. We're more concerned with how we play the game knowing process improvements will yield better outcomes in the long run. We take a swing even though we may strikeout in front of 40,000 fans in the stands and millions more watching online and on televisions.

Batter up!

Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms) 

Setting up accidental discoveries

Lots of our best ideas come from "out of the blue". They are serendipitous in nature, close to chaos, confusion and happenstance. Where Good Ideas Come From acknowledges this source with its fourth fractal pattern: Serendipity.

Some minds are more receptive to fortuitous inspirations and coincidence than others. Psychologists have labeled this a "high tolerance for ambiguity". It's the opposite trait from control freaks who need to be right and to avoid cognitive dissonance. Steven Johnson mentions research that correlated higher IQ with longer moments of mental confusion. This generative chaos in the mind yields new connections, divergent explorations and fresh possibilities.

Confusion is technique used in brief therapy, counseling and mentoring. Once a client's trust is established, the client often hangs on the therapist's every word. The confusion technique breaks this excessive dependency by contradicting oneself. The client no longer knows which advice to trust and is left to choose without help. Clients accidentally discover they can sense which is better when presented with confusion. They begin to trust their own judgment more and go within to get more guidance.

We can get more meaningful coincidences to occur by seeing life as a waking dream. Characters and events that show up in our perceptual field seem symbolic and significant. We appreciate what happens for showing us something we were ignoring, teaching us something we needed to learn next or answering a question we've been asking. We stop taking evidence at face value and open to the depth of what it offers us. With practice at this, we notice more of what's happening and how perfect it is for our journey right now. We accidentally discover that life can be trusted to show us way through its obstacle course.

Lots of brilliant breakthroughs have come upon waking from vivid dreams. Creatives get this phenomena to happen more frequently with a process of incubation. It presumes there's a reward coming for not knowing the right answer, next step or solution to the problem. It's the opposite of schooling that gives us bad grades for being "stupid like that". Incubation also relies on knowing so much that it becomes apparent what is unknown. Just before going to sleep or taking a nap, it works to become consumed with everything that is already known about a problematic situation and the request all that generates. Then let it go and see what comes to mind upon waking. It may be a a revised definition of the problem, a new way to see the evidence, a process to trust without interfering or a solution to implement.

We also set up accidental discoveries by taking a break. We can escape self-perpetuating task mode by taking a walk, a swim or a nap. It often helps to listen to some music or gaze at the scenery without thinking. Our minds open up and become more receptive to fresh discoveries. We also set up chance encounters by breaking our physical routines. Taking a different route, shopping at a different store or responding differently to a familiar request all invite serendipity. We also realize more accidental discoveries by taking a break from knowing what we're seeing. When we adopt a stance of innocence facing a mystery in search of clues, our "eyes of wonder" will see things that had not occurred to us before. We will wonder how we could have been so blind, so quick to assume or so biased as to miss what we see with these "new eyes".

I wonder if I've said enough about this? I wonder if I've said too much? I wonder if there's something else to be wondering about right now?

Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms) 

Where hunches go to die

Hunches are born fragile, awkward and ugly. They deserve no respect or adoration when they first appear. They mature slowly which is why the third fractal pattern in Where Do Good Ideas Come From is called "Slow Hunches". As Steven Johnson reveals with some great examples, lots of hunches die before they reach adolescence. The care and feeding of immature hunches is not regarded as important or well understood by most. Yet coming up with good ideas depends on nurturing hunches through their early, awkward phases.

Hunches usually die from neglect. They go to die where they won't be given a second look. They begin to die, like the tiny fairy Tinkerbell in the story of Peter Pan, from not getting believed in anymore. Ugly hunches get profiled in error as "never going to amount to anything worthwhile" from their unimpressive beginnings. They then get shelved, stored or filed in ways that ensure that they are easily forgotten. It's as if we believe that hunches ought to be awesome from the git go. Never mind any slow process of maturing, ripening or pairing with other ill-formed hunches.

There's no way to take a second look exactly like the first look. It's like our inability to step into the same river twice, as Heraclitus famously observed. The next time we consider a previous hunch we're coming from a different place, placing it in a different context and pondering different questions about it. The hunch may speak to different issues now. It may seem valuable in other arenas or pursuits. It may reveal what's missing and needing further exploration. Taking a good look at it again may get it seem pretty good looking and impressive.

It's become possible to capture and store our hunches digitally. This can be a game changer when trying to keep ugly hunches alive and well. In digital formats, we don't need to revisit a hunch as it was originally recorded on paper. We can find it searching with different keywords, questions or problems in mind. I do that with the archive for this blog. I'll vaguely recall a hunch I had a couple years ago without remembering much about it. I can search the archive for what the hunch was about, how I explained it or what I thought it signified. When I find it, it looks very different to me than my vague recollection of it. It may look useless to my current thoughts or much more valuable than I expected. Lots of people find this blog doing Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask searches with keywords or phrases. You can even search this archive in particular with the box in the upper left corner on the web page for this blog. Digitized content makes it easy for hunches to ripen into full maturity.

Welcome to my world of keeping fragile hunches from suffering neglect or going to die where they will never be given a second look.

Here are my other explorations of the seven fractal patterns of innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson:

1. Migrating to the adjacent possible (adjacent possible)
2. How do good ideas behave (liquid networks pattern)
3. Where hunches go to die (slow hunches)
4. Setting up accidental discoveries (serendipity)
5. Benefiting from errors (errors)
6. Getting psyched for exaptation (exaptation)
7. Flourishing on emergent platforms (emergent platforms)