Education and learning
Shifting outcomes requires shifts in our thinking about what works The science journal Nature recently published a thought piece looking asking the question: Does psychology have a conflict of interest problem? The article looks at psychologists who consult as well as research and whether or not they should declare the income obtained from the products […]
Conflicted Interests Read More »
Innovation can involve small adjustments or great transformations. Social media provides a case study for understanding why ongoing monitoring and evaluation can tell many different stories about whether change is big or small, for good or for not — or something altogether different. Online social networks like Twitter and Facebook often notify their users of
Transformation and Innovation Read More »
Innovation involves bringing something new into the world and that often means a lot of uncertainty with respect to outcomes. Learning is the one outcome that any innovation initiative can promise if the right conditions are put into place. Innovation — the act of doing something new to produce value — in human systems is
Learning: The Innovators’ Guaranteed Outcome Read More »
One of the central pillars of evaluation is assessing the quality of something, often described as its merit. Along with worth (value) and significance (importance), assessing the merit of a program, product or service is one of the principal areas that evaluators focus their energy. However, if you think that would be something that’s relatively
The Quality Conundrum in Evaluation Read More »
DNA doesn’t predetermine our future as biological beings, but it does powerfully influence it. Some have applied the concept of ‘DNA’ to a company or organization, in the same way, it’s applied to biological organisms. Firms like PWC have been at the forefront of this approach, developing organizational DNA assessments and outlining the principles that shape the DNA of an
Genetic engineering for your brand Read More »
Adaptation, evolution, innovation, and growth all require that we gain new knowledge and apply it to our circumstances, or learn. While much focus in education is on how individuals attend, process and integrate information to create knowledge, it is the social part of learning that may best determine whether we simply add information to our
Complex problems and social learning Read More »
Today Apple is expected to release a new series of iPhone handsets with the base price for one set at more than $1000. While many commentators are focusing on the price, the bigger issue is less about what these new handsets cost, but what value they’ll hold. The idea that a handset — once called
The logic of a $1000 iPhone Read More »
Enormous energy is spent on developing strategies to accomplish things with comparatively little paid to the systems that they are being deployed in. A good strategy works by design, and that means designing systems that improve the likelihood of their success rather than fight against them and this is no truer than in the effort
Learning fails in bad systems Read More »
It is poetic irony on many levels that weeks after Leonard Cohen releases his album about the threat of death that he passes on, mere days after we saw the least poetic, most crass election campaign end in the United States with an equally dramatic outcome. This points to art, but also to the science of
You Want It Darker? Read More »
In this mini-series we look at the phenomenon of paradox and some of the prominent ones in our social world. Today we look at human disconnection in the face of mass-urbanization, globalization, social media and information technology and why so many feel so isolated in a world pushing ever-more interconnection. It is possible to have
The Disconnected Human Read More »
