Innovation Workshop

Join us to learn to follow a structured ideation process. The workshop provides a clear understanding of Edward de Bono's six hats and provocation techniques. It also provides an overview of other innovation tools.

Space is limited! Register now!

Visualizing ideation techniques (courtesy of SmartStorming)

Details:

• Where: 1016 McDonnell Douglas Hall

Saint Louis University
3450 Lindell Boulevard
Saint Louis, Missouri 63103

• When: Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 - 6:00pm – 8:30pm

• Cost: For our first workshop, CEL is offering this event FREE!  

Register here!

Edward de Bono is regarded by many to be the leading authority in the world in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. He has written 62 books with translations into 37 languages and has been invited to lecture in 54 countries. He is the originator of lateral thinking which treats creativity as the behavior of information in a self-organizing information system - such as the neural networks in the brain. From such a consideration arise the deliberate and formal tools of lateral thinking, parallel thinking, etc.

Learn about approaches to innovation as developed by Edward de Bono:

The De Bono Society

Mission Statement

To harness the synergies of creative thinkers and to offer them a forum to contribute to, comment on and chat online with like-minded people.

Changing thinking from the 'what is' to the what can be.

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3 Quick Tips on Selling Yourself

The following blog post is from this excellent site by Tracy Boyer:

Innovative Interactivity (II)

a digital watering hole for multimedia enthusiasts

Selling Yourself: Improving your negotiation skills

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ March 11, 2011

Negotiating is mandatory in nearly all aspects of your professional career from negotiating your salary to negotiating quality/quantity expectations in a project. Many hate to negotiate, but if done poorly or not done at all it can and will have long-term effects on your career. Here are three quick tips on how to improve your negotiation skills.

1. Never quote your ideal salary if you don’t have to!
I have seen it time after time where employers request salary ranges or a preferred monetary amount. It is smart on their end to do this because most of the time people undervalue themselves in order to look “more attractive” to the company and secure an interview slot. However, if you aren’t required to, never state numbers!

There is a well known anchoring and adjustment bias in business where future estimates are made in proximity to the initial quoted figure, regardless of the inaccuracy of the number. So, if you undervalue yourself from the beginning, this anchoring bias will follow you throughout your career since raises are anchored to last year’s salary.

Also, if you initially give a low-ball estimate then the employer will counter with a figure around your number and you will never know if they had a higher number in mind before the negotiation period began. Never leave extra cash lying on the table!

2. Do your research to determine your true worth.
While it is ideal to make your employer or client give the first quote, many times this is not an option. In order to maintain the upper hand in this situation, do your research. Coming to the table with a well-defined argument will nearly always ensure that you get what you want.

For example, when negotiating salary at a job be sure you examine multiple salary calculators and speak with others to get a feel for what the industry pays for certain positions. The site TechCareers has an excellent base salary range calculator based on industry and location. I searched the “Internet and New Media” job category in the Raleigh/Durham, NC region and here are some figures they calculated:

Median Expected Salary:
Executive Producer – Web = $139,708
Creative Director – Web = $127,920
Associate Producer – Web = $68,490
Copy Editor – Web = $56,482
Entry-level Designer – Web = $51,314

Obviously these figures largely depend on the company, as a philanthropic organization or small start-up will not be able to afford those amounts. However, I encourage you to create a free account and search for salary estimates in your area to become more knowledgeable about what your particular field financially offers its employees.

3. Get public commitment.
In my Leading and Managing class last fall, Professor Alison Fragale taught us about different persuasion tactics and principles. One was the consistency principle that proves people like to stick to their public commitments to protect their own professional image.
An interesting study around this principle is the “foot in the door” tactic where you first ask for a small favor that will be accepted, such as signing a petition supporting a philanthropic organization. Afterward, you ask for the large favor that you initially wanted, such as financially supporting the non-profit.

“One explanation for the success of the foot-in-the-door procedure is that people comply with the second, target request to be consistent with agreeing with the initial small request,” researchers wrote.

Public commitment can come in a number of forms. If you are negotiating for something within a group, ask to do a public vote where everyone raises their hand to confirm commitment. If you are working on a project and negotiating price, workflow, job responsibilities etc., ask for an email detailing the specifics and feel free to cc relevant people so that everyone is aware of the agreement. Lastly, if you are having a one-on-one conversation with a colleague or boss and you want to utilize this consistency principle, rather than beginning with a statement begin with a question. For instance, “Do you think I have been working hard lately? Great, I do too. That is why I’d like to ask for a day off next week …”

Creative Exchange Lab - Architecture, Urban, Design, New Media & Innovation Center

Eco Village & Eco-Tourism

Tribe Wanted -- Sierra Leone

In October 2010, a new group of visitors will arrive on Sierra Leone’s John Obey Beach, 20 miles south of the capital, Freetown, and begin to build a new life alongside the local fishing community.

Tribewanted Sierra Leone has formed a partnership with the government, landowners and the local John Obey community in Sierra Leone to create an eco village community over the coming years to support sustainable development in the area.

For the visiting tribe members it will be a unique opportunity to experience a peaceful, beautiful and vibrant country seeking a new beginning a decade after being ravaged by civil war.

Tribewanted Sierra Leone is a local organisation and its non profit partner, Shine On Sierra Leone , has been working in the region successfully for five years, sponsoring 6 schools and computer centres around the country as well as providing microfinance to over 5.700 women across the country.

Tribe members will have the opportunity of joining in with the development of the new village alongside the local team and community. The project will be pioneering a new building technique called ‘Superadobe” developed at Cal Earth , a technique that uses only local earth and material.

All profits generated from Tribewanted Sierra Leone will be re-invested in the local John Obey community, in education and microfinance through Shine On Sierra Leone.

Tribe members will be able to book their visit to John Obey online at a cost of $450 / £295 a week. This will cover their stay, all meals and a contribution to the community development. Members will need to cover flight costs and local transport, from airport by boat, to the beach.

A maximum of 30 tribe members will spend a minimum of 1 week at a time living alongside a local team and the community immersed in the day to day running and development of the village. The project will run from October to June annually, closing for the rainy season.

Company Behind WeatherBug Launches First For-Profit Greenhouse Gas Measurement Network

Greenhouse gas emission caps are useful in theory, but there's a problem: Emissions calculations are made based on the raw materials that go into power plants and factories using a technique known as "predictive modeling", and not on the actual greenhouse gases released in energy production or manufacturing. Enter Earth Networks (formerly AWS Convergence Technologies), a company that plans to move beyond static emissions measurements by building the world's first commercial greenhouse gas measurement network.

Earth Networks--the company behind the popular WeatherBug application--is teaming up with the Scripps Institute of Technology to build the network, which will see 100 emissions-measuring instruments installed worldwide over the next year and a half. The company will use a technique called "inverse modeling," which combines real-time weather data with atmospheric data from the sensors, to figure out where carbon dioxide and methane gases are coming from and where they are headed.

Earth Networks is investing $25 million over the next half decade to build out the network and establish the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research at the Scripps Institution. Earth Networks anticipates moving beyond just CO2 and methane to other gases in the future.

de Beer's mystical video "The Ghosts"

White Paint, Chocolate, and Postmodern Ghosts

By RANDY KENNEDY

SURVEYING the row of door buzzers outside the hulking Brooklyn building where the artist Sue de Beer works, it somehow seems fitting to find a lone occupant listed on the building’s top floor, with no further explanation: “GOD.”

From Creative Exchange Lab

“I don’t know who that is or what they do,” Ms. de Beer said, breaking into a laugh when a reporter pointed out the small handwritten label next to the buzzer. “I’ve never really been up to that floor.”

But given the nature of her work and especially her most recent creation — a lush, frankly mystical video piece called “The Ghosts” that will have its debut Thursday in an unlikely place, one of the stately period rooms at the Park Avenue Armory — it is tempting to imagine the Holy Ghost himself at work up there in an old warehouse on the Red Hook flatlands, not far from a dingy bus depot, an Ikea and a discount store called 99 Cent Dreams.

From Creative Exchange Lab

To continue reading this article from the New York Times, click here.

The Internet Kill Switch (Egyptian style)

[from a blog post from David Strom's Web Informant]

My first car had what is called a kill switch that I put in shortly after I had bought it. I was living in LA at the time, the capital of car thefts, and I even though it wasn’t all that fancy a vehicle I wanted to make sure that it was somewhat protected. It was a simple thing: you had to turn the headlights on before you started the car. I thought I was in good shape until I found out how many valets could figure out the sequence (in LA you have to leave your car with valets a lot). This is a good analogy for the same process when it comes time to turn off Internet access to an entire country, whether it is for cybersecurity or censorship. Someone clever will always figure out a way around the blockade.

Click here to read more . . .