A class member points to this interesting article from the New York Times on the reality of innovation. The article Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work by Janet Rae-Dupree (http://tinyurl.com/2tgdon) touches on topics we've discussed in class and gives a nod to Peter Drucker:
"We've all heard the tales of the apple falling on Newton’s head and Archimedes leaping naked from his bath shrieking “Eureka!” Many of us have even heard that eBay was created by a guy who realized that he could help his fiancée sell Pez dispensers online.
The fact that all three of these epiphany stories are pure fiction stops us short. As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Innovators and other creative types, we believe, stand apart from the crowd, wielding secrets and magical talents beyond the rest of us.
Balderdash. Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."
Posted: February 7, 2008 3:13 pm | 0 comments
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should now be accessible through the course eLearning page. If you have any trouble accessing either document please email me.
Posted: February 7, 2008 3:22 pm | 0 comments
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Following up on our discussion of entrepreneurship in education, an article on how American universities are developing overseas branches (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/education/10global.html?hp)with an interesting discussion of the problems and benefits:
"The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is becoming an important export as more universities take their programs overseas.
In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.
And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Already, students in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems of traveling to America."
Posted: February 10, 2008 2:07 pm | 0 comments
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If you are curious about how artists and others are dealing with a world of free content then you may be interested in this discussion between musician Brad Turcotte and upcoming class guest speaker David Weinberger.
(FYI: Attendance not required for our class and there may well be video or audio of the event posted later.)
Monday, February 11, 7:00 PM
Griswold Hall Room 110
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA
(nearest T stop: Harvard Square)
"The traditional music industry is crumbling. From the dust comes … BradSucks. Brad Turcotte is the very paragon of a Webby, open source musician. At his site (http://www.bradsucks.net) you can download his music for free or pay him a little money. You can reuse his music as you’d like, subject to the Creative Commons license. Not only can you remix it, but Brad posts especially good remixes. He has even open sourced the paint job for one of his guitars. At this Web of Ideas, Brad will play some music and talk with David Weinberger of the Berkman Center about whether he’s the future of the music industry.
Web of Ideas is an evening discussion series at the Berkman Center, lead by Berkman Fellow David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Everything is Miscellaneous. Each session will begin with a 20 minute discussion-opener, followed by open conversation. Food will be provided.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to Amar Ashar at rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu if you plan to attend."
Posted: February 10, 2008 2:14 pm | 0 comments
Tags: creative commons, discussion, music, open source, remix
Following are some of the websites we referred to in class:
Wal-Mart's expansion into medical care: http://tinyurl.com/2ozeyx
On the need for digital curators/researchers: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/02/the-digital-cur.html
"Much the same, the digital realm too needs curators. Information overload makes it difficult to separate junk from art. It requires a certain finesse and expertise - a fine tuned, perhaps trained eye. Google, memetrackers such as Techmeme and social news sites like digg are not curators. They're aggregators - and there's a big difference."
Online art galleries/marketplaces:
Charles Saatchi's student art site Stuart: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/stuart/
Handmade item marketplace Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/
Marketplace for web programmers Rentacoder: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp
If you are thinking of planning out a project with any sort of web-based component it could be interesting to take a look around to get a sense of going rates.
Jobsite for nonprofit and volunteer positions, Idealist: http://www.idealist.org/
Reclaiming materials:
House built with material from the Central Artery (torn down and replaced by the Big Dig): http://tinyurl.com/2mlvsj
New Yorker article on the demolition of a building that describes the value of old lumber: http://tinyurl.com/38kfjq
"Reclaimed lumber had become one of his passions since studying 211 Pearl. More than three trillion board feet of wood have been put into American buildings since 1900, he said. Of that, about a billion and a half board feet are torn out every year. When his boss’s father founded the company, in 1933, he got the wood for free—demo crews were happy to have it hauled away. Now the yard paid up to two dollars a board foot for old pine. Weathered hardwood was in such demand that barns across the Midwest were being pulled down for scrap, and eco-conscious celebrities like Bill Gates were using reclaimed wood in their houses. One bar on the Lower East Side was panelled entirely with cypress boards from pickle barrels."
Posted: February 16, 2008 5:13 pm | 0 comments
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