It is a nice story, but that is all!

Have been marking exam papers these last few days.  The preferred question chosen by students of this particular exam is that of Michael Porter's model of five forces to gain advantage through the use of information systems and technologies (IS).

Students now write about how IS helps gain competitive advantage.  They know famous examples about companies that reduced costs or increased their intimacy with customers.  All by using IS.  

They also know that social media is really important.  And that it can help companies gain knowledge about customers.

So these are parts of a same story that now has a story beginning in the 1980s and cruising through the 90s and the year 2000 to come today...

It is a nice one, it appeals, it is simple yet powerful.  Like good stories tend to be. 

But it is only a story.  It is one version of reality.  What I call the official version.  

The one that offers hope to students that someday they will get their dream job by carefully aligning their knowledge with what a company needs, and in the process using some technology to help themselves and others. The one saying that if you do what it says in the tin, you will succeed.  

The official version is of course plausible and possible.  

And we all like to believe in cause and effect, as children. If you eat your cereal you will grow strong.  

What the Porter story does not say though is that in reality we do not fully control what happens with technology, we are not the only group of people that contribute to what goes on.  Even if we like to think we do.  There are many forces, many of which are hidden, sudden.  Decisions happen almost by chance.  And so outcomes.

Am personally trying to better understand how as an individual I use this story to convince myself I can be someone and so can my students.  Someone with a purpose in life.  Someone with causes and effects

As if life had only one story to tell.  Or as if our lives depended on it.  

Difficult to write other histories when everyone likes the official version.  

But anyhow, we can produce our own stories.  Mine at the moment is about letting go of causes and effects.

So if you are reading this because you are / were one of my students, friends or relatives let me say this: technology can help, but do not put your life and your mind, even your happiness, to depend on it.  Do what you want with or without IT in the best possible ways. And remember there is always something to learn from success or failure.

The imperfection is there, can we live with it?

Technology is artificial.  It runs against nature.  By studying it and its impacts, we can contribute to reinforce it, even if we claim we try to be socially conscious.  

I have stopped teaching e-business, but still in the back of my mind there is a temptation to find better ways to help people gain someone from the online world.

A key challenge though is that we cannot control technology.  We cannot foresee all its effects.  We cannot ensure fairness, participation, better quality of life.

Because we r playing with the artificial.  And we expect ourselves and nature to fully embrace it.  

Can we add a sense of uncertainty, a sense of humbleness, a sense of humanity, so that we do not fully believe on the transformative power of technology? 

How can we infuse this sense in our children? 

How can we still enjoy our research and practice, and coexist with others that believe in other panaceas including the power of marketing, finance, prediction, economics, and even those that discuss how to live a good life? 

Some food for thought...

Teaching creativity, making the most of the present time

So this year I am teaching a new course on creativity and problem solving.

So far it has been fun.  Reading some books, planning exercises and encouraging students, six (6) of them, to think of creativity as a way to become happier in our lives.  We are now taking the course step by step, trying to decide together what could come next.  

It has also been stressful, as I need to recruit more students if the course is to survive.  

Together with an initial desire to use systems thinking, the stress and anxiety have taught me that we all need to keep things simpler and clearer.

Problem is, as academics we usually become complex, mono thematic, isolated.  We also raise our level of expectations about our students. Currently I am struggling with setting expectations that will be ok for students and myself.  

Am also learning to acknowledge that I have some of these expectations which are different to everyone else.  For example, I initially wanted to use this course to write a book as way of being creative and also productive (mind you research expectations are still there and on the rise after last government assessment).  So far, this expectation has subsided a bit, because it is impossible to do both things (teach and write). So I have settled for keeping a diary with thoughts and ideas, which I might check in the future.  I keep thinking of nice journal article titles without success.  

Student expectations about this course and life in general are also very new to me.  Some students just want to learn more about their new cultural environment. Others see education as a way of increasing their chances to get a dreamed internship or job.  To both, I think creativity can help them, to try something new and to learn from it.  Expectation about developing creativity as a transferable skill sounds nice, but impractical.  If it is a skill, then the obvious question is: Creativity for what? The answers might not take us anywhere.  I have preferred to relate creativity to individual happiness. So we are all in the same page, my students and me, looking for something we can relate to albeit in different ways. 

For some reason I also want to encourage my students to be flexible, so that they can combine their plans with new opportunities, and also accept failure.  Failure is not something I am used to, but am learning to accept it.  So far creative people are able to fail 'in private', and to try things in a safe environment.  So students can still learn positive things.  And they can venture to explore life out there, outside the classroom. Because life is everywhere, not only at university.  

In organisations failure is often not tolerated.  Even at universities, we must succeed at once.  So this course should have been a better success.  It was not axed because of a kind of duty of care towards the 6 people that signed up for it.  I have been given another chance.  Lucky me.   

For creativity to work, almost any effort undertaken by individuals should be praised, even if that is considered a 'failure'.  And if you are creative and believe in your ideas, you must defend them, but also listen to feedback.  It might tell you that either you are wrong and need to accept it, or that maybe you are in the wrong place.  Only feedback I have got so far is: low student numbers.  Do something about it. My students keep saying they took this course because they want to be different from anyone else, that is more positive feedback I think. 

So even if creativity is praised and becomes the norm at work, we need to be careful to institutionalise it.  Creativity also happens in very unexpected ways, when we are not thinking or being forced to think about new ideas, but when we are enjoying life.  Creativity is complex, systemic, it can result in unexpected results and ways of working, and I also want to believe it can positively change those people who want to venture and be creative.  Myself I wanted to try new things.  Maybe next time I could do it in other ways, not only by proposing and running new courses. M

A good environment can help, although it should not be the only thing.   Mentors, teachers, colleagues, loved ones, competitors, they all help or challenge you as a creative individual.  Good habits like for instance having a goal to be surprised by or surprise others everyday can also help as well as having some good mental and physical space to be creative.  Personally I would love to have bit more of institutional flexibility, for instance to have some assurances that the above course could run next year even with the same student numbers.  I have some ideas on how to change it (for instance calling it creativity and innovation).  

All these factors suggest that creativity is a systems phenomenon.  As such, it requires continuous learning about what works best for each individual and each organisation.  We need to see the wider system in which creativity initiatives are to be developed or nurtured. 

Many systems thinkers have relied on the use of systems methodologies to help them and others be creative.  This is good but only part of the story about creativity if we are going to treat it as a systems phenomenon. We should broaden our horizons on this regard.  Systems methodologies for creativity (and problem structuring or problem solving) can become prescriptive and ignore both the individuals and the context in which they are used.  

To my students on creativity, I would like them to enjoy more the present moment, be mindful, critical but also realistic, to weigh evidence and make informed decisions.  Myself, I would like to be more flexible and open even if I think I am being creative.  Some of these insights come from my reading and practice of ideas on creativity that come from complexity theory, psychology.  In the near future I would also like to learn more about creativity from art. 

So far students and me seem to be able to be open to what the present has brought us.  I hope we can make the best of it before we all become more controlled or routinised in our quest to learn about or practise creativity.