Mar 242013
 

A powerful technique to organize and generate ideas


Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

According to Wikipedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node, and lesser categories are sub-branches of larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to a central key word or idea.

And you go, huh?

Mind mapping is one of those techniques which is easy to demonstrate or show but difficult to describe in words.

Check out the following video for a quick primer using a basic example:

Why is this technique superior to your typical lists of bullet points?

It has to do with the way the brain functions. It doesn’t organize its information like sentences in a book, instead it’s stored as a large collection of ideas connected with one another.

Tony Buzan, a influential promoter of mind mapping, likes contrast traditional note taking vs. mind mapping:

  • Traditional note taking: a linear recording of information without connecting the concepts together. Doing without thinking
  • Mind mapping: radial explosion of visually interconnected ideas

The technique has been widely used to promote creativity, problem solving, and synergetic ideation. The main reason why it’s such a powerful tool for those activities is because it forces to create association of ideas in a very visual way which tends to be the brain’s favorite way to recall and create new relationship between ideas.

To get started, all you need is a blank sheet of paper, a few colored pens and you are ready to go using the following guidelines suggested by Tony Buzan himself:


Guidelines on how to create a mind map


  1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
  2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
  3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
  4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
  5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
  6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
  7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
  8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
  9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
  10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

Here’s a mind map on how to create a mind map… :-). The same website allows you to create online mind maps for free.

If you want to share your mind maps, or simply prefer to create them digitally, they are dozens of applications for desktop applications, web sites, and iPad/tablet/mobile applications to help you. Checkout Mind Mapping Software Blog for an impressive collection of reviews and recommendations.

Not convinced on where you would use mind mapping? Here are 100 reasons.

So, the next time you need to organize ideas in a new way or want to trigger new ideas, why don’t you give mind mapping a try?

PS: Have you ever used mind mapping? How did you like it? Share your comments below.

Mar 102013
 

A very creative way to promote ideas within a group:
Mutual Fun


In the following video, Professor Hayagreeva Rao from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, delivers the message that killing ideas is way more important that collecting ideas.

Now, there’s the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it.

In most companies, the decision of promoting or killing ideas is left in the hands of a small committee  referred as the “Murder Board” by Professor Rao. According to Professor Rao, the murder board ‘s decisions may come across as arbitrary and in the worst cases subject those proposing the ideas to ridicule, humiliation and rejection, thereby killing their initiative. As a result, people watching those actions will become reluctant to suggest ideas in the future. The end result is that the smart people who were hired by those same companies become “dumb” or rather mute/silent.

To me the most interesting idea brought up by the video is the case-study of the company Rite Solutions. Their brilliant idea is to organize all the company’s idea into a “Stock Market for Collective Genius” that they call: Mutual Fun (no “d”).

 


3 principles behind mutual fun


In a nutshell, the concept behind Mutual Fun is organized around these 3 principles:

  • Every employee is given $10,000 of “opinion money” to buy savings bonds and stocks
  • Originators of ideas (either conservative or far-out ideas) are encouraged to develop “expect-us” (prospectus) and get “prophets” to get stock listed
  • Others can buy stocks, offer suggestions, and volunteer time.

Low-quality ideas don’t find “prophets” or are quickly eliminated for lack of support. However, since those ideas have been viewed by many employees, they may become the material for new ideas which might get more traction.

Anybody can suggest ideas and Professor Rao recalls that the receptionist of the company for example had 2 ideas in the Mutual Fun.

Rite Solutions developed some pretty sophisticated tools to show the “stocks” and stock activity in the Mutual Fun with charts, news stories, levels of funding, etc… to help stock owners to manage their stock portfolio.

So, instead of solely relying on the opinion of a few individual (the murder board), Rise Solutions was able to tap into the wisdom of the company as a whole by looking at the ideas that rise to the top of the Mutual Fun market. Those ideas then get fully funded with real money (called “adventure capital”, cute) to implement the ideas contained in those stocks.

I wish such a tool existed as Open Source for other companies like mine to use.

Maybe something for me to work on…

Mar 012013
 
Creative Type

Credits:http://bit.ly/Z8yooH

Let me start with this a true, personal anecdote…

Many years ago, I was at a party chitchatting with a young lady, when the inevitable “what do you do for a living” question came up.

The following ensued (with some embellishments):

  • Her: what do you do for a living?
  • Me: why don’t you guess? (I was so cool, back then)
  • Her: Are you a chef?
  • Me: Non. (keeping it cool but seriously thinking, can you be any more cliché!?)
  • Her: A musician maybe?
  • Me: No. (I had longish hair then)
  • Her: do you work in the clothing industry?
  • Me: no (back to the French theme)
  • Her: The movie industry?! As a director or writer maybe?
  • Me: Nope
  • Her: alright, I give up.
  • Me: Ok, I’m a software engineer.
  • Her (barely masking her disappointment): REALLY!? I thought that you were more of the “creative type”! (She probably did the air-quotes with her fingers)
  • Me (Trying to ignore her disappointment): Why would you think that I can’t be both a software engineer and also creative?!

And this is really what’s at the heart of this post: Can one really be a software engineer and be creative too?


Can one really be a software engineer and be creative too?


Talking on behalf of my software development  brethren, my answer is a resounding, heck yes!

Of course,  for the uninitiated eye (like the person in the dialog above), software engineering/development might look more clerical than intellectual, and more structured than imaginative. But for anyone who’s worked in the field, it should be apparent that our work is more governed by ideas and possibilities than the monotony and tedium of routine tasks.

Surely in recent years, the hundreds of companies and thousands of applications (for iOS/Android) created by software engineers are a very clear and visible testimony that software engineers are a creative bunch.

One might say that the coding, the testing, the debugging are probably not what comes at the top of the list of exciting things to do. But can’t they? Who among us never felt the touch of divine inspiration when coming up with a genius way of coding or testing something? That “aha” moment when the idea that makes all the difference comes to you.

How about “being in the zone” when the code seems to write itself and designs, made of one clever idea after another, comes alive before your very eyes.

To me (and I’m not a musician), it seems very much like what composers must experience when they create music: breathing life out of nothing (bytes vs. notes)

As a software engineer, if you don’t feel that you are creative, maybe you never tried to picture yourself as a creative person and maybe it’s time to come out of the “creative closet”.

On the other hand, if you feel that you are actually very creative and full of ideas but your creativity and ideas haven’t been acknowledged by your peers, by your boss and by your company in general, then you need to wake them up.

I could go on but hopefully you get idea.

So, you the teacher, the QA analyst, the engineer, the equity trader, and you who’s always been labeled as “non creative”, do feel that you are the “creative type”?

Share you thoughts/frustrations/inspirations in the comment section below.

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