Anonymous asked: Juhi, can I not make comments on your posts? You should read "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" in Langdon Winner's book "The Whale and the Reactor."
thanks for recommending the book. Do we know each other?
Committee for thesis
I have Lee, Pam and Christopher on/in my committee for thesis and though I have my meetings with Christopher and Pam lined up for this week, i did get a chance to speak with Lee. i thought I should start with a discussion of the proposal I had come up with, rather just the justification to take it one step at a time. I certainly feel assured and confident of what i do when I talk to Lee and he throws up some questions about what i am doing and why am I doing what I’m doing.
i am supposed to work further more for my research question to take the right shape and come up with a schedule which can keep me motivated and so that I can see what all needs to get done!
Proposal deadline coming up next
It was time to submit the first draft of our proposal, including all of its components. And though I felt I wasn’t ready for it yet but we all had to submit that draft on the day. Since I had been writing down some stuff while reading the material from books and online resources, that was helpful. But that wasn’t the formal writing that one can put in the proposal for others to read. Another thing which I just did not have as accurately were citations, I just knew where I read it but I wasn’t able to go back and re-write those. It was like a setback for me as I did have all the material and information required but I was not able to pull it off in a short time. And that certainly means proposal will take the time it needs to to take the right shape and form.
Week 8!
I tried hard to derive meaningful interpretations from my visual to move on to a better understanding of how these components connect, not until Lee helped me scrap out what I needed to and draw a line, literally draw a line and see the one common thread and start to focus on that. This one line was understanding complexity which was clearly visible in systems thinking, integrative thinking and the core capabilities of a working team. An important lesson learnt here was sometimes you can literally scrap out things that you don’t need to keep forever, but just keep them on one side and then move on with the necessary components.
This thread of understanding complexity helps to see an isolated problem as a part of an interconnected network of related issues, and also where a whole is visualized while working on individual parts. I need to help the working teams to understand this complexity so that they can avoid unintended consequences and hence achieve a dynamic equilibrium in society.
And again, Lee kept questioning me on how was dynamic equilibrium related to avoiding unintended consequences, which forced me to rethink about it.
Visualization
My new visualization shows the common areas between integrative thinking and systems thinking and Deming’s core capabilities of a working team. I intend to integrate both systems thinking and integrative thinking into an ideal working team to avoid unintended consequences. The bigger goal here is to maintain the dynamic equilibrium in a social system, which is when the rate of change in a social system is commensurate with the system’s ability to cope with it. And this balance is a continuous process in a social system.
moving on..
After reading about Systems Thinking, I have found that systems thinking and integrative thinking have a lot in common. there are clear intersections and I intend to integrate the two in order to better understand the patterns of events. While reading, I also came across Deming’s core capabilities of a working team and the fact that unless teams cant learn, the organizations cannot learn. And hence, I have started to focus on working teams in organizations focused on innovation rather than the broad term innovation.
I have been sketching to to understand my content more clearly and I think I will have new HMW’s for this week.
Week 7
Reading more about systems thinking made me realize how much it aligns with integrative thinking and how this alignment can help innvators achieve a dynamic equilibrium in a social system. I have been studying Rotman’s model of integrative thinking and listening to his interviews.
Trying to get more depth into the innovators, I read the Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the Learning Organization. From here I got the link to Deming’s Core Learning capabilities of a team. I think I am now moving towards working teams and how they can incorporate systems thinking and integrative thinking to achieve dynamic equilibrium in a social system.
Week 6
I met with Christopher, Helen and Pamela and had some fruitful discussions. I soon realized after those that I really need to cut everything to a do-able level. As Christopher said, everything’s great but this ain’t a PhD program, and I took major steps to narrow down the fuzzy areas i was looking at.
Pamela pointed me towards leverage point in systems thinking after discussing the content that I had. I have moved much towards systems thinking and have reached a point where i am able to see how systems thinking can help achieve a dynamic equilibrium in a social system.
My discussion with Helen forced me to think as to why innovators do not put that much effort into studying the consequences. And that it is the Regulating Authorities who would be more concerned with the consequences of an innovation. We thought this would be a deal breaker for the innovators!
List of How might we’s so far..
Week 2:
How might we create a synchronized environment of the business industry specific demands and current design graduates (to fit in design thinking theories into the framework of the business world)?
Week 3:
How might we create a distinct role of designers in formulating design strategies in an interdisciplinary environment?
How might we use design thinking in larger amounts to make sure innovation leads to a net social value?
How might we use design strategy as an unconscious effort in order to focus all innovation towards good innovation?
How might we use the implicit connotation of humanness to focus design strategies towards world peace?
Week 4:
How might we make the consequences of innovations desirable?
How might we control the way an innovation is introduced/diffused in order to control its consequences to a positive extent?
How might there be innovations through interdisciplinary collaboration which narrow the socio economic gap rather than widening it?
In what ways can interdisciplinary collaboration help in measuring unintended undesirable consequences of innovation?
How might interdisciplinary collaboration help in diffusing innovations relative to the cultures in context?
How might inter disciplinary collaboration help in diffusing innovation in a culture relative way that narrows the socio economic gap in a society?
How might interdisciplinary collaboration help define attributes of an innovation tailored for cultural relitivism?
How might inter disciplinary collaboration help diffuse an innovation through communication channels that are relative to the cultures in context?
How might we design a process to take into account cultural relitivism when diffusing innovation?
How might interdisciplinary collaboration initiate research of unintended undesirable consequences caused by cultural relitivism in order to narrow the socio economic gap of a social system for future innovations?
How might diffusion researchers research on cultural relitivism as a cause of unintended undesirable consequences in order to narrow the socio economic gap in further innovations in a social system?
Week 5:
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to forecast the unintended and undesirable consequences of innovations in order to curb the socio economic gap in a social system?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to diffuse innovations relative to their respective cultures in a social system in order to promote dynamic equilibrium?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to understand the nature of a social system in order to diffuse innovations
in uniformity?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to understand the characteristics of a decision making unit in a social system in order to diffuse innovations in uniformity?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to understand cultural relitivism in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to a dynamic equilibrium in society?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to foresee socio economic gap in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to socio economic equality?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to understand attributes of innovation in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to dynamic equilibrium?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to understand attributes of innovation in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to socio economic equality?
How might we use visual methods to forecast the unintended and undesirable consequences of innovations in order to promote dynamic equilibrium in a society?
How might we use integrative thinking to diffuse innovations relative to their respective cultures in a social system in order to narrow the socio economic gap?
How might we use participatory design methods to diffuse innovations relative to their respective cultures in a social system in order to narrow the socio economic gap?
How might we use participatory design methods to understand the nature of a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to dynamic equilibrium in a society?
How might we use participatory design methods to understand cultural relitivism in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to socio economic equality?
How might we use integrative thinking to understand attributes of innovation in a social system in order to diffuse innovations that lead to socio economic equality?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to give adequate attention to the consequences of innovation in order to remove the pro-innovation bias?
How might we use interdisciplinary collaboration to give adequate attention to the consequences of innovation in order to remove the pro-innovation bias?
